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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25472923">The Windows Were Painted Shut</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykonic_fic/pseuds/dykonic_fic'>dykonic_fic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Painted Shut [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Elias Bouchard Being a Bastard, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Head Archivist Tim, Hurt No Comfort, Jon doesn't know about the supernatural, M/M, VERY Cannon Divergent, au- jon's normal staff at the institute when the cannon is going down, cannon typical mind games, cannon what cannon, receptionist jon, we have mind games and machinations but also actual coercive control</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:49:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>53,238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25472923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykonic_fic/pseuds/dykonic_fic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It had made him feel sufficiently shitty, he thought, as he typed out a professional acceptance note on his phone. Dejected, he accepted the shitty, horrible, fucked up offer because he was broke, and because he was broken.</p><p>He dragged his leaden limbs to bed, and worried. He had a weekend to prepare for his first week working at, not for, The Magnus Institute.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elias Bouchard/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Painted Shut [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1854661</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>234</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Degree of Scepticism</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s hoping it’s his lucky day, and to Jon Sims, it looks for all the world as if it will be. The weather looks good, but he searches around his apartment for his umbrella, just in case. He finds it quickly; he’s been keeping the place tidy because it helps him stay focused, and he puts his jacket on. He takes a quick look in the mirror. He’s pretty sure he’s nailed smart casual. He second guesses the jacket. He looks back at the weather and leaves it on.</p><p>Of course he’s nervous when he heads out the door towards the tube. Considering his niche choice in degree, he can either teach it or do something useful with it, and the only place he can do something useful with parapsychology is probably The Magnus Institute.</p><p>He had a natural interest in researching often side-lined experiences, he reminded himself on the tube. He thought the documentation of alleged supernatural experience could offer a different perspective into psychology. He quickly dismissed that thought, it sounded too sceptical. </p><p>He picked the wrong degree, he thought. He cared about psychology, but he’d got sucked into the neurological basis for supposedly supernatural phenomena, a rabbit hole which had led him into the academically fascinating field of parapsychology. But he was too sceptical for the field he’d found for himself, and the degree had rendered him incapable of entering real psychology. He corrected himself internally. ‘Standard’ psychology. </p><p>He really fucking needed this job.</p><p>But, he was more than qualified and he stood every chance, so until he walked into the Institute itself, his apprehension weighed on him, but he kept it in check. He stood every chance.<br/>
But maybe not against a room full of nervous applicants sitting in reception. </p><p>He balked at the sight. That wasn’t very professional, was the first thing he thought.</p><p>He spoke to the receptionist, who explained there’d been a few delays, that applicants were welcome to visit the café or stay in reception. She pointed to a hastily put up sign, explaining that there may be further delays. Beneath it, there was a table with a list of names and an estimated time of interview. They were obviously rough estimates, they were scheduled fifteen minutes apart. Jon located his name on the table and sighed when he saw his own time. Plenty of time to get a coffee at the café upstairs, and far too much time to actually enjoy it.</p><p>The tension was palpable, vibrating through the air with every nervous tic or flicked gaze to a watch or phone screen. The difference between knowing, in the abstract, that the position of Head Archivist was competitive was very, very different to seeing that competition in person.</p><p>He headed towards the café and looked around, trying to invest in the possibility of working here without getting too attached. If he hadn’t spent eight years and a small fortune at Oxford University, the Institute would have been nothing like anything he’d ever seen before. Instead, he appraised the narrow corridors and neoclassical style with the same, detached interest as he did back in university. The portraits in dark gold frames, the busts on off white pillars against gloomy green walls screamed ‘academic!’ in a way that no longer intimidated Jon, but seemed designed to remind him that this place had never expected to receive him. It wasn’t exactly like he’d grown up poor. He’d been comfortable enough. These places were designed to put the wealthy at ease. They looked like someone else’s family home, and Jon, to put it lightly, made a poor guest.</p><p>Looking at the menu, he felt like an extremely poor guest indeed. The options were written on a blackboard behind the bar, and the line was long, and he’d left his glasses at home because they were old and he wanted to look smart, and he knew his bank account had ended up in double digits again. He kept straining to see what sort of price range he was dealing with, but it wasn’t until he was first in line that he saw that an americano was £3:50. Unwittingly, he sucked in a breath, and the barista smirked. He scanned the menu, but it looked like that Americano was his only option. He wasn’t pleased.</p><p>He found a quiet corner and sulked over his drink, feeling like a loser on a game show.</p><p>And, to his absolute horror, someone was looking at him. Someone tall, and good looking, with nice clothes. Jon broke his gaze, but then the man came towards him. Jon braced himself.</p><p>‘Is this chair free?’</p><p>‘Of course,’ Jon started, relieved.</p><p>‘Great!’ The man sat down with him. Jon was appalled. Then he tried to conceal it. Naturally, he failed when he tried to look around the room surreptiously. The café was, to be fair, completely full.</p><p>‘I can’t believe the turn out! I’m guessing you’re applying, right?’</p><p>The man looked about ten years younger than Jon, so he assumed they must be the same age.</p><p>‘Right.’ He nodded. Clearly, the other man expected a more verbose answer. He wasn’t getting one, Jon decided.</p><p>‘Things are usually competitive around here though.’ He pressed on.</p><p>Jon forced a question from himself.</p><p>‘Do you work here, then?’</p><p>Delighted, the man started answering, and Jon did find himself intrigued to know what the hell kind of paranormal investigative work could go on in a place as academically respected as the Institute. The man was a researcher, and that usually entailed verifying the facts presented in the statements, cross-examining with police reports, modern folklore, and urban legend.</p><p>‘It’s really important to know whether or not someone’s just regurgitating something someone else had said on the internet, or whether their experience is unique.’ He said, seeming to enjoy talking about his work. That boded well for the job.</p><p>‘Does that make it more or less bullshit? If no one else has said anything about whatever thing it is they’re describing.’ Despite himself, Jon was drawn in. That was almost exactly what he’d done his research on.</p><p>To his displeasure, the man laughed, and Jon withdrew. He didn’t actually care what this man’s insight was into his question.</p><p>‘Well that’s a tricky question, thanks for the interview prep!’</p><p>‘Speaking of, isn’t it coming up to the hour? When’s yours?’ Jon asked. If he couldn’t make him go away, he could at least make it clear that he wanted him to.</p><p>‘Oh shit!’ Said the man, apparently completely unperturbed despite the exclamation. ‘It’s now! Thanks for reminding me!’</p><p>He downed the espresso, and Jon wished he’d spotted it on the menu. That was always the cheapest drink.</p><p>‘I’m Tim, by the way! Nice to meet you!’ And he bounded off, before Jon could offer his own name, suggesting that maybe Tim had clocked Jon’s obvious discomfort. That was more irritating. He hadn’t been oblivious after all, and yet he’d made him sit through that.</p><p>Jon checked his own phone for the time. The screen was empty of notifications. He didn’t bring earphones. He had fifteen minutes to go before his interview, and that gave him pause for thought. There were either multiple interviewers, they were very short interviews, or, there were going to be further delays.</p><p>There were further delays, obviously. Jon joined the leagues of applicants in reception, where he, like them, leaned against the walls and milled about, stewing in anticipation. Some of them had coffee in takeaway cups. Jon had downed his own because he couldn’t take the mug and saucer with him. It felt like a waste, even though he’d nursed it for about an hour.</p><p>He felt like he was waiting to enter an exam. Just as he had then, he stood quietly on his own while small groups chattered around him, quiet and anxious. It struck him then that everyone else already worked here. They all knew each other. That annoyed him. He actually really needed the job. And if it was a promotion with a formalised application process, it was completely unfair to open it up to those outside the Institute. Obviously they were going to promote internally. He felt like he’d been set up.</p><p>Thirty minutes after they’d spoken, and fifteen minutes after Jon was meant to be interviewed, Tim stumbled out of the single door in the corridor that seemed to open. He shut it behind him without looking back, and his expression was completely harrowed. He looked a different man. His knees trembled, and somehow Jon could see the bags under his eyes from across the room, despite him looking insultingly bright eyed when they’d spoken. He hadn’t meant to stare, but Tim made eye contact and said the words Jon couldn’t have wanted to hear less.</p><p>‘You’re next. Good luck.’</p><p>Worse, a hush fell and all eyes turned to Jon. The chatter died, and the silence kindled into a seething murmur of gossip. So this wasn’t happening to everyone. </p><p>If Jon was lucky, this was a Tim problem. Tim had pissed off the interviewer. </p><p>Jon nodded at Tim, politely, and walked into the office. Just out of the corner of his eye, he watched Tim all but sprint downstairs, and presumably far, far away from the Institute.</p><p>That didn’t bode well at all.</p><p>He quickly stepped over the threshold and entered the Institute’s Head Office.</p><p>He was in no way prepared for the sheer wave of dread impacting him on entry. It hit him like a tsunami, and he gasped. He realised that the man in front of him was already staring at him before he walked in. No, Jon thought, he was looking at the door before he walked in. Still, he was disconcerted, and the feeling intensified under his interviewer’s piercing gaze.</p><p>‘Jonathon Sims’, he must have read it from the CV in front of him, but his eye contact was unrelenting. Jon was unsettled by the intrusion. ‘Take a seat.’ He added an icy smile, as an afterthought, and Jon returned it, steeling his nerves.</p><p>Jon had thoroughly researched the Institute’s management before applying, and the man’s name didn’t escape him now.</p><p>‘Great to meet you, Mr Bouchard.’ He didn’t have a nameplate on his desk, and for a moment, this seemed to catch his attention. </p><p>His eyes flicked up, his mouth twitched faintly upwards, and then, suddenly, Jon was fixed with the most searching, invasive stare he had ever been afflicted with. Much like the fear of walking into this room, and its intensification upon walking in, he’d never been so uncomfortable being looked at as when Mr Bouchard looked at him, and then that feeling intensified. He’d never needed to look away from someone so badly. He’d also, never, ever, found it impossible to do so. </p><p>Elias dropped his gaze when Jon blinked. Bafflingly, Jon thought he looked disappointed.</p><p>The bizarre micro-exchange must only have lasted a few seconds, Jon reasoned. Elias didn’t keep a clock in his room, but he knew you can only look at someone in silence for a few seconds.</p><p>He was almost surprised when Elias started asking him questions. He was inordinately relieved that they were ordinary questions about his work experience, his practical research skills, and his qualifications. He was answering familiar questions he knew the answers to, he knew what relevant work experience he’d done, he was happy to explain how he could bring his skills to the role, and then, suddenly—</p><p>‘So why do you want to work at the Magnus Institute?’ The question itself was one that Jon was prepared to hear, but his answer was not one he expected to hear from his own mouth.</p><p>‘The Magnus Institute is the only respectable place I can be of any use to whatsoever.’ His eyes widened as he realised it was true as he said it. ‘I want to use my degree, but I’m a sceptic. This place has the resources to identify the underlying causes of paranormal imaginings once and for all.’</p><p>It was almost exactly what he’d rehearsed not saying. He grit his teeth.</p><p>Elias, unfortunately, looked utterly unimpressed. Then his smile twisted into something Jon might call cruel, if he was feeling paranoid. He had warded off the feeling for so long, but with every second sat in this room, his mounting anxiety seemed to close in.</p><p>‘And that’s what you wrote your thesis on, and it didn’t exactly make waves… I imagine.’</p><p>Jon was stung.</p><p>‘It didn’t, exactly, no.’</p><p>‘Is that why you’re here, Jonathon?’ Elias posited, mildly. To Jon’s horror, he found himself nodding.</p><p>Elias tutted, and Jon’s gaze jumped from his own knees. He was about to protest that you can’t say things like that to people, but it turned out, looking up was a mistake.</p><p>Like a hand on his throat, Elias’ eyes crushed his windpipe and he found himself utterly speechless. And, for the first time in his life since it happened twenty years ago, he thought of the horrible, horrible thing he saw in 1996 when he was eight years old.</p><p>Only for a moment, though. He was close to crying though, and he didn’t have a clue what the hell had brought that back up. The situation was stressful, he reasoned.</p><p>‘So we just filled the role you were applying for. After you, I’m going to conclude the interviews. Unfortunately, we have already found our Head Archivist.’</p><p>Somewhere, beneath the immediate concerns for his finances, the mortification of being told to his face that he just fucked up, and the long forgotten incident that had just been dredged up, in that numb place he often found himself, Jon corrected himself. The situation is and continued to be stressful. And the situation is becoming infinitely more stressful.</p><p>Was he going to have a panic attack, right here, right now? He wondered, distantly.</p><p>Elias was looking just past him, at the door, where Jon was going to drag himself out and Elias was going to announce to the crowd that their interviews were cancelled, after they’d waited hours. His stomach flipped at the thought of being made an exhibition. He realised Elias was still talking. </p><p>For fuck’s sake.</p><p>‘…other positions, though. The best of which is likely receptionist. You’d be welcome to apply today, though since another company handles our administration team, I can only have their details passed on to you. I believe the application is online.’</p><p>He said it like he knew that would be a problem for Jon. It was a problem for Jon, and he smiled like it wasn’t, and like his heart wasn’t pounding, and like the tears pricking his eyes weren’t threatening to fall and complete the picture. He didn’t have a laptop, it broke two days ago, so this would mean a trip to the library, probably later today, when all he wanted to do is curl up and possibly just die. He smiled like absolutely none of this was a problem, and thanked Elias for his time and recommendations.</p><p>When he got out of the chair and left, he took his time so it wouldn’t look like he was running away. He felt weightless. This was definitely an anxiety attack. He shut the door behind him and though he could see the last of the applicants that hadn’t stuck around to wait the entire forty-five minutes he went through hell in Elias’ office, he refused to look at any of them. </p><p>In the same daze, he walked to the tube, entered the block of flats he was currently inhabiting, and broke down in the lift, crying into the mirror and praying with the other side of his brain that he wouldn’t bump into anyone. He stumbled out on his floor, crushed, and mortified, and fumbled with the door key. When he opened the door, he threw himself in, and slammed the outside world out, leaving it as shunned and rejected and worthless as he felt. He slid to the floor and stayed like that for a while. He felt drained.</p><p>An email came through on his phone, shaking him from his stupor</p><p>He’d been offered the job. He didn’t actually need to interview. The email from Rosie, the receptionist he’d be taking over from, explained that his interview with Elias had actually been sufficient.</p><p>It had made him feel sufficiently shitty, he thought, as he typed out a professional acceptance note on his phone. Dejected, he accepted the shitty, horrible, fucked up offer because he was broke, and because he was broken.</p><p>He dragged his leaden limbs to bed, and worried. He had a weekend to prepare for his first week working at, not for, The Magnus Institute.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Receptionists’ Commandments</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘Isn’t there usually a two-week shadowing period?’ Jon asked, completely befuddled for the millionth time on his first day on the job.</p>
<p>‘You’re lucky I’m quitting <em>after</em> I show you the ropes.’ She snapped.</p>
<p>That shut him up. He hadn’t expected the previous receptionist to be quite so hostile, and for a terrible moment he wondered if she wasn’t leaving by choice.</p>
<p>‘I’m sorry. That was rude of me. It’s just, listen, um,’ her eyes flicked to the lanyard she gave him, ‘Jonathon. People don’t really get to quit here. You’ll learn that soon enough, if you make it here. So, I’m just taking my chance while I can.’</p>
<p>Her laugh was hollow.</p>
<p>His brow furrowed, making it the million and first time she’d absolutely blindsided him. She waited expectantly for him to pick up what she was putting down. For a moment, he tried to understand. Then he studied the spreadsheet.</p>
<p>It certainly did seem that The Magnus Institute was frequented by the general public, perhaps more often than Jon would have assumed. One of the things he was meant to do was take a record of subjects coming in. He was meant to sign them in and sign them out.</p>
<p>‘Subjects?’ He’d blurted.</p>
<p>‘The people who come in to give statements. We call them subjects. You give them a consent form, a contact form, and then there’s an optional form where they can write their statement or they can give it directly to a researcher, or if they don't want to know anything more about what happened, to an archivist. Most people don’t choose to be interviewed, some do, most of them are blatantly untrue, but all of them are upset.’</p>
<p>The pause hung in the air.</p>
<p>‘What do you do, when they’re…’</p>
<p>‘When they’re crying? Well that’s what your office is for.’ She smiled conspiratorially, unlocked the door behind the front desk and showed him his office. It was fashionably minimalist, spacious, and it was, without any competition, the most professional office space he’d ever seen.</p>
<p>‘It’s a confidence room,’ she continued, sitting at the office chair behind the desk, leaving Jon to occupy the high-backed chair in front of it.</p>
<p>‘it’s somewhere for people to cry in private about whatever happened to them. There’s plenty of tissues on hand. It’s also where they’re meant to fill in the forms, but if you can’t keep them contained to a room, then no one really minds if they fill it in reception.’</p>
<p>‘Right.’ He said confidently, as if the very thought of tears didn’t fill him with dread, and as if he understood what she meant by that second thing.</p>
<p>He looked out of the window, at the view of the courtyard behind the Institute. It was tastefully filled with tall rushes in pots and short trees in different pots and coloured gravel making patterns in troughs. Corporate, but pleasant enough. All Jon could think about was what a shit place to cry this would be. He felt for anyone giving a statement in tears with nothing but the conspicuously placed tissue box for comfort.</p>
<p>She gave him a couple of contact forms, he put down his grandma as an emergency contract even though she’d died last year. There were a few mission statements to read, a code of conduct he had to sign, and finally, his contract.</p>
<p>True enough, he was working with a third party alongside the management team, a startup company called Solum, and to his shock, he was upper management. He was stunned by the news. With the derision Elias had offered the job, Jon hadn’t been able to feel anything other than disappointment. But, at least on paper, he’d really fallen on his feet. This was objectively, a much, much better job.</p>
<p>Somehow, that disappointment turned inwards. He felt so ashamed of himself that after all that education, all that learning and researching, he was happier to keep the Institute ticking than to actually work within it. But he couldn’t deny it. He was, actually, thrilled.</p>
<p>They headed back out for a tour of the Institute as he’d know it. The receptionist’s hours started before the Institute was open to the public, and before the library was open, so he had free run of the place to see where things were and get used to the layout.</p>
<p>She locked the office’s door behind them, and Jon opened his mouth to ask.</p>
<p>‘Always lock that door behind you. Lock any door you possibly can, but especially that one.’</p>
<p>Jon shut his mouth and didn’t question it. There were probably valuables in there, or it was to keep the general public out, or something.</p>
<p>Rosie opened the draw in the front desk and pulled out a blank white card. It had ‘KEY’ helpfully written on it in fading permanent marker. She told him to keep it with his ID on his lanyard.</p>
<p>‘You should keep your ID and the key card on you at all times, you never know when you need to get around the building quickly, and you don’t want to lose precious time going back for your key card.’</p>
<p>‘Tight time schedules round here?’ He asked.</p>
<p>‘This is a very time sensitive environment, yes. Every second counts. Keep your access card on you.’</p>
<p>‘And the ID?’</p>
<p>‘It’s always good to be identifiable.’</p>
<p>‘Right.’ Said Jon, resolving not to get sucked into these cryptic details, especially not when he was tentatively hopeful.</p>
<p>‘Do you have an organ donor card?’ She said it was a trace of humour that Jon unconsciously latched onto, though he glared at her. She was overtly trying to scare him now, and he would stubbornly resist.</p>
<p>‘Not on me, no. And I haven’t written a will, either.’</p>
<p>She smiled grimly.</p>
<p>‘I’d set some time aside and get that sorted, if I were you.’</p>
<p>If this was the workplace environment, Jon didn’t think he was missing out on much if he didn’t make friends in the Institute.</p>
<p>And so settled the increasingly heavy atmosphere between them as they began the grand tour of the Institute. There was a breakroom, it was cosy, there were a couple of people milling about, reading sheets of paper and drinking coffee. There was the café upstairs, and a stationary room with a beastly photocopier that dominated the narrow room. Jon stood outside while Rosie pointed out labelled boxes that piled up all the way to the ceiling. She showed him where the forms were, and managed to squeeze him into the tiny space to show him how to photocopy the forms.</p>
<p>He looked at them and winced at the things these subjects were agreeing to. The process of investigation was shockingly invasive, and this was what impressed upon him the depth of need for answers and explanations for the terrible things that they’d seen, for the terrible things that had happened to them.</p>
<p>A memory, long buried, itched away in the back of his mind. He turned his attention back to Rosie, who was explaining why there was such a limited number of key cards.</p>
<p>‘-Specifically so there’d never be too many people wandering around at one time.’</p>
<p>There was a desperation in her tone, it seemed to Jon, that suggested she wanted him to ask why that might be.</p>
<p>Instead, he nodded. ‘Oh, in case of a fire,’ he said sagely. She looked like she wanted to shake him. He pointedly stepped out of the stationary room and reconstructed his personal space bubble.</p>
<p>‘Well, we have had problems with fires, in the past. But mainly with losing people. People get lost here a lot.’</p>
<p>‘Which is why we sign people in and out, yes, that sounds like a very sensible system.’ He was getting testy.</p>
<p>He knew she was angling for questions, but if it was horrible, he didn’t want to know. She was leaving, he was joining, and as much as he might want to be prepared for the job, he didn’t want to be scared by tall tales. Besides, if the Institute was really so prone to disaster, he’d have heard about it by now. He wasn’t <em>new</em> to the paranormal community.</p>
<p>She sighed, finally understanding that Jon wasn’t going to engage with whatever dramatics she was trying to lure him into.</p>
<p>He smiled tautly, and they began to walk back to reception.</p>
<p>‘You have to lock up at night.’</p>
<p>‘That’s not in the job description,’ he said hotly.</p>
<p>‘We do a lot of work off the books.’ She deadpanned. He waited for her to elaborate, and stared at her until she did, finally willing her to answer just one of the questions she’d been asking him to ask.</p>
<p>‘Elias expects us to do some preliminary research on the statements before you hand them over to research. Just a basic bit of Facebook stalking and googling. And obviously, you’re meant to look out for the subjects, but you’re also meant to manage them too, and they’re emotional, and <em>volatile</em>, and they don’t usually want to do as their told. And all the staff are always having some kind of crisis, and we’re meant to at least try to boost morale. You’ll have to schedule everything for Elias, the man can barely tie his own shoelaces, and research and the library are always fighting, you’ll always have something to smooth out there!’</p>
<p>She laughed, but Jon’s tentative hopes were evaporating.</p>
<p>‘I’ve been a receptionist, a researcher, an archivist, an emotional support worker—to the subjects <em>and</em>everyone else around here, and I’m Elias’ PA, too. You don’t get paid for any of those extra roles.’</p>
<p>Jon nodded, weakly. He wasn’t even one of those things.</p>
<p>‘You’re also, kind of, security? We have a blacklist, and you’re meant to keep those people out. Oh and due to the nature of the statements, we often get police around too, so you’ll have to deal with them and they’re always so <em>pushy</em>- ‘</p>
<p>‘Excuse me, what?’</p>
<p>‘Oh, you get used to them.’ She brushed the concern aside, and then she seemed to sober.</p>
<p>‘Elias…’ she cast her mind for a delicate way of saying it, ‘Elias has a lot of expectations, and he doesn’t really communicate any of them.’</p>
<p>By the time they’d returned to the front desk, Jon was about ready to run out of that door, never to return. Then Rosie slammed a huge, ancient looking torch onto the desk.</p>
<p>‘You’ll need this, when you lock up. Keep a sharp ear, and whatever you do, don’t go downstairs.’</p>
<p>‘Into the archives?’</p>
<p>She nodded, completely serious.</p>
<p>‘If they need you, they’ll send someone up. Don’t go there though. Don’t go there when you’re locking up. Don’t go there if they ask you to. Don’t speak to people when you’re locking up. If you hear someone when you’re locking up, just leave. Trust me on this, Jonathon, don’t go downstairs, don’t hang about when you’re locking up, and just… don’t engage with the archives altogether.’</p>
<p>He gave in. That got to him. And the thought of locking up, really, really didn’t appeal to him. But he’d signed the contract now. He nodded, gravely, and she seemed satisfied that the message had impressed itself on him.</p>
<p>‘And don’t trust Elias.’</p>
<p>‘Obviously,’ he said airily. ‘Why would I?’</p>
<p>She glared at him.</p>
<p>‘And never, ever correct him. You’ll regret it if you do.’</p>
<p>She’d finally tipped him over the edge.</p>
<p>‘I’m sorry, but what exactly- ‘</p>
<p>‘Like I said, he has a lot of expectations. Meet them, no matter what. Don’t let the front desk phone ring for too long, and really, really don’t go into the archives.’</p>
<p>He was frustrated, and he was frightened, but it occurred to him then that she was, perhaps, just too scared to explain what exactly had happened here, and where her resources and tips had come from. Clearly, working with the paranormal and their believers had affected her, and he resolved to keep it together better than that. He was glad that he didn’t have to shadow her for two weeks, her ambiguous paranoia would have driven him mad.</p>
<p>‘Well with any luck, all those are your problem now!’</p>
<p>‘Thank you.’ He said, distant, listening to her heels clack away on the marble floors. He could practically hear her jumping for joy, and Jon was glad he’d never have to see her again because he was pretty sure he hated her.</p>
<p>He made sure the office door was definitely still locked, and satisfied that it was, he sat down at the desk. He closed the sign in programme to view the desk, and there, set as the screensaver, were a list of rules titled ‘Surviving The Magnus Institute.’</p>
<p>Despite the obvious panic bait, he read the list.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>‘Surviving The Magnus Institute</p>
<p>Don’t correct Elias.</p>
<p>Lock the office behind you.</p>
<p>Lock the office when you’re in the office.</p>
<p>Don’t lock yourself in with a subject.</p>
<p>Never touch the subjects.</p>
<p>Never touch anything they give you, call artefact storage.</p>
<p>Turn the lights out at reception.</p>
<p>Never walk in the dark.</p>
<p>Keep the key card <span class="u">IN YOUR HAND</span>.</p>
<p>Keep your ID on you.</p>
<p>Don’t speak to anyone while you’re locking up.</p>
<p>Lock up and leave.</p>
<p>If it’s important write it down on paper.</p>
<p>Don’t speak to the archivists.’</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He read the document a few times, getting more and more concerned that this was the screensaver, when someone started talking.</p>
<p>‘You didn’t tell me you were going for receptionist! And I thought I had to<em> compete</em> with you! You could have told me!’</p>
<p>With a settling dread, Jon pulled his eyes from the last of the receptionists’ commandments, and looked up at Tim, the new Head Archivist at The Magnus Institute, and judging by his excited grin, Tim had no idea what he was in for. Or at least what Rosie thought Tim was in for. Jon pulled his own face up into a weak facsimile of a smile.</p>
<p>‘I didn’t actually know I was going for receptionist. But there we go.’ He typed in the details; who had come into work (Tim Stoker, H/Archivist), what time (8:32 am), which office (Archives, -1 Floor), and happily, Tim had disappeared by the time he looked over the computer screen.</p>
<p>
  <em>Don’t speak to the archivist.</em>
</p>
<p>How the hell was he meant to accomplish that?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>from Deaf Republic: 1<br/>BY ILYA KAMINSKY</p>
<p>Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air-<br/>a story sung by those who danced before the Lord in quiet.<br/>Who whirled and leapt. Giving voice to consonants that rise<br/>with no protection but each other’s ears.<br/>We are on our bellies in this silence, Lord.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. In the Dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A week in, and Jon still didn’t see what Rosie was talking about. Of course, he followed all the advice. Most of it, no matter how dramatically it had been delivered, was actually pretty helpful. If he kept his key card on him, the automatic doors opened around him. When he locked up at night, it was sensible to turn the lights off in reception. That way, he wasn’t stumbling about in the dark.</p>
<p>The subjects were all fine, too. He’d been surprised though as he expected the same kind of zealous believers he’d come across in university and he was dreading the stress it would put on his patience to deal with that sort every day.</p>
<p>Instead, his very first subject on his very first day opened his eyes to the reality of the Institute and the true role it played.</p>
<p>She was an incredibly old woman. Her hair was thin grey, and downy on top of her head. Her scalp showed visibly beneath it. She moved slowly, inching into reception. Jon had grown up around elderly, so her demeaner and frailty didn’t shake him as he knew it did others. He waited for her to reach front desk, refusing to insult her with pity.</p>
<p>‘Hello, how can I help you today?’</p>
<p>He spoke as clearly as he could. Quietly, she told him she wanted to make a statement. Once she told him her name, he signed her in quickly and invited her into the office. He held the door open for her and waited while she shuffled into the room. She gently lowered herself into the chair, while Jon talked her through the available options for making a statement.</p>
<p>‘There’s two ways you can make a statement. There’s direct recording, that means a researcher will record you speaking directly about your experiences. Or, you can write down your experiences, either privately or with a researcher present. What would you prefer?’</p>
<p>She looked up at him with those tired brown eyes, seeming not to understand at all. Jon waited. The elderly had raised him, he knew better than to talk down to them.</p>
<p>‘Can I record alone?’</p>
<p>Jon smiled politely again, and explained that the researchers are trained to use the recording equipment.</p>
<p>After careful deliberation and a thorough examination of the pros and cons to each method of making a statement, she decided she wanted to dictate her statement to a researcher, once Jon had explained the confidentiality policy. The whole negotiation took half an hour. She seemed to be an extremely considered woman, as well as a reticent one. Once agreed , he offered her a cup of tea while he called for a researcher. He wasn’t sure why he did. For a moment he was struck with wondering whether tea was allowed in the office. Then he decided he was upper management and it was his office.</p>
<p>She smiled, and asked for a biscuit too.</p>
<p>While the kettle boiled in the staff room, Jon returned to front desk and phoned for a researcher. The phone on the front desk was old, and triggered old muscle memory. He curled the plastic coiled wire around his finger while he punched the numbers into the boxy receiver on the desk. This particular woman had reminded him of all the manners he’d picked up when his grandmother’s friends came around. Combined with the nostalgia evoked by the old phone receiver, his first day had him misty eyed. Grief was a funny thing, something he was never prepared for. It had been a year since she died, and Jon was struck with the wish he could tell his grandmother about the new job. It seemed strange that she just didn’t know.</p>
<p>A researcher picked up, and Jon explained there was a subject. He gave her name, and requested someone come and transcribe her statement.</p>
<p>‘Oh god, her? Again? She comes in every week and says the same thing. We’ve already looked into it, and there’s nothing there, her house is fine. She’s just… losing it a bit.’</p>
<p>The voice down the phone laughed and tried to sound apologetic.</p>
<p>‘That, or she’s lonely. Either way, we have real work to do. See you!’</p>
<p>The researcher hung up on him. Jon seethed. He thought everyone who came here was losing it a bit, so it wasn’t fair to single any one subject out as being particularly out of touch with reality. For a moment, he thought about dropping it. Instead he picked up the phone, and called research back.</p>
<p>‘I’m sure you’re extremely busy, but I believe that the validity of the claim is not up for debate when subjects make their statement. So, and please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that taking this subject’s statement <em>is</em> your real work. I suggest you send someone up. Thank you!’</p>
<p>He put the phone down before he got a response. His heart beat. But he felt like he’d done the right thing when he brought a cup of tea and dug a biscuit out of the jar and told her someone was on their way to transcribe the statement.</p>
<p>She looked surprised.</p>
<p>‘Oh, the old receptionist said that no one would be available for weeks. Thank you.’</p>
<p>Jon missed his grandmother when she said it.</p>
<p>He heard two researchers in the stairwell, chatting loudly. Jon’s ears burned.</p>
<p>‘God, what a prick, he’s not going to last, is he?’</p>
<p>‘Hope not.’</p>
<p>They laughed and Jon glared daggers at them.</p>
<p>He went on to consistently struggle with the research team. It seemed that no one held them accountable, and for the whole week they tried to avoid subjects they found unappealing. Jon wouldn’t let them. To Jon, everything every one of them had said was so demonstrably, undeniably, and reassuringly false that he couldn’t see a single good reason for trying to discern between time wasters and ‘valid’ subjects. Furthermore, it was right there in writing, anyone could make a statement at any time.</p>
<p>Making tea became habitual. He switched the chairs around too, and only partly to give the subjects a better place to vent. He quite liked the thought of the researcher sitting in that uncomfortable, unwelcoming chair. He really began to resent research; they were arrogant. They believed that because they followed up the statements that they knew the subjects.  </p>
<p>For example, they believed that only stupid subjects gave implausible, stupid statements. Jon, however, could see that many of the subjects were obviously homeless and looking for a quiet, warm place to spend an hour for the cost of a silly ghost story.</p>
<p>The tea flowed, the confidence room gradually became comfortable, and Jon had even grown accustomed to the subjects’ tears. It was easy because he remained detached and professional, and no one expected anything else from him. He was polite, and he made tea and offered tissues at the right time and acted like whoever was in front of him wasn’t in the kind of emotional distress that brings people to the Institute for answers. To him, that was what respect looked like.</p>
<p>He still followed the commandments though. He was careful not to lock himself in with any subject while they settled into the office. He was careful never to touch the subjects, even if they handed him a statement or passed back a form.</p>
<p>A lot of his time was spent handing out those forms, explaining the statement procedure, the subject's rights and what they could expect from investigation or archiving. It was also making a cup of tea ready while they either wrote their statement, or while they waited for a researcher to interview them.</p>
<p>And he didn’t hear anything said in the confidence room; everything there was, after all, spoken in strict confidence. But some of the subjects were desperate to talk, and they’d desperately try to tell Jon about their experiences. Jon would cut them off, quickly, before it became impossible to stop the flow of words and tears. He would remind them that he wasn’t responsible for hearing or following up the statements, but a trained researcher would be with them shortly.</p>
<p>He soon found those particular subjects always had the most heart-breaking things to say. Missing family members, murdered loved ones, even dead pets left Jon feeling hurt for them. They wanted answers and explanations, and in the cases he heard, he was amazed to discover that sometimes the circumstances didn’t add up, and there were no easy explanations for what happened. But Jon never felt like there were no answers. They were just… obscure, sometimes, he would admit.</p>
<p>But Jon knew there were more tricks the human mind could play than anyone could ever be conscious of and stay sane. That in the very worst of times, the brain took shortcuts to reason that fall apart with retrospection. That unpicking terrifying facts from terrifying fictions was a nightmare. And Jon did believe they were, fundamentally, fictitious.</p>
<p>But, like a publishing house can be invested in fiction, and care about authors, Jon did, to his own surprise, really care about the subjects. He made sure they left okay. He tried to make them feel safe, and trusted, and heard. At his best, he slowly became someone that knew how to reassure someone that their experiences wouldn’t be questioned, or interrogated, or dismissed under any circumstances. He didn’t need to believe the factual truth someone told him to do any of those things. At his worst, he called research and burdened them with the work they really didn’t need or want to do.</p>
<p>None of the subjects ever wanted their statements archived. He never called the archives.</p>
<p>Those unofficial, unspoken roles had started to inch into his work life.</p>
<p>Though, his antagonistic relationship with research and his total aversion to the archives didn’t keep him from making a few connections in the Institute. Those in Artefact Storage were always looking for a listening ear, and would frequently drop in just to tell Jon about the most recent horror story he didn’t believe. The librarians weren’t much more self-possessed. As they were often doing their own research, or publishing and always trying to manage a gruelling timetable of work, Jon rarely spoke to anyone who wasn’t dealing with acute emotional distress.</p>
<p>He didn’t mind hearing out the rest of the staff’s troubles, provided no one expected any empathy of him. He wasn’t anywhere near as daunted by the appearance of the emotional side of life now that his own emotional life had stabilised. As long as Artefact Storage and the Library only wished for an ear and a space to vent, Jon had an office and a kettle and very few words of comfort. By the end of the week, he’d been pressured into making a Facebook account, and he’d been added to a few different group chats. There was a plan to go for drinks on the coming Saturday, and Jon even considered attending.</p>
<p>Of course, Rosie hadn’t been wrong, even if she had been paranoid. The job was difficult, the work environment was hostile, and working with the public was irritating and working with research was worse. There were subjects who refused to cooperate. There were blacklisted subjects who kept trying to sneak in. Jon had needed to find his backbone on a few occasions even a week in.</p>
<p>‘Good job handling him,’ Elias had said, off-handily, when a single withering glare had sent one of the Institute’s familiar faces back out on the road.</p>
<p>Elias flitted in and out of Jon’s life. Rosie was right about him, too, he really couldn’t manage his own shoelaces. Jon found himself organising every inter-department meeting, fielding every question from the benefactors, and arranging the meetings between Elias and the financial backers. And Elias thanked him gratefully and told him he didn’t know what he’d do without him and breezed between the departments and the archives and the reception and asked Jon how he thought the Institute was going. Elias confused Jon. He was a different man compared to the monster who’d interviewed him, Jon had thought. He’d even shared that particular observation with a friend from the library, who had just laughed nervously, and Jon realised he probably shouldn’t talk about his boss or his interview like that.</p>
<p>He was slowly picking up on the workplace culture, and if he was going to make his own rules for surviving the Institute, he’d have to prioritise getting the balance right between being friendly and being professional. Here, the standards seemed to shift constantly, but he wasn’t getting it wrong all the time anymore. It seemed that favouring the Institute over the subjects was almost always a sure fire way to reassure any member of staff, and that it was almost never okay to talk about Elias. It was strange. No one would say a word against him, which was far more damning than if they’d just complain.</p>
<p>And, though running his eyes over the last of Rosie’s commandments every time he did so, he’d spoken to everyone in the Archives now. Worse, they were all pleasant. Instantly likeable. It was hard to imagine them being ignored, actually, and not just because they were loud, and funny. At least, Tim and Sasha were exuberant souls that Jon found hard to imagine among the oldest of the statements in the Institute. Martin, quiet, painfully shy, frightened of simply existing the wrong way, may have seemed more at home in Jon’s image of the archive in the basement. But he certainly did have a certain presence, no matter how hard he attempted to erase it. When Jon heard the three of them talking in the breakroom, they looked like they belonged on the opening sequence to a new sitcom for three reasons; the three of them looked so young, the kind of young adult that always made such good protagonists on TV. Then, it was that they always looked like they were having fun. They were always laughing, talking, bantering with each other. He saw the playful shoves, the claps on the back, the shared smiles.</p>
<p>And they were only ever with each other.</p>
<p>If they were in the breakroom, they were in the breakroom together, and it would be empty, bar them. Even Jon only spied nosily through the open door, curious about the kind of people who would choose that kind of isolation. Because it did seem that even when they left the archives in the basement, they were shunned by the rest of the Institute.</p>
<p>The only other member of staff Jon ever saw around them was Elias.</p>
<p>Of course Jon had spoken to them too. How could he not? He spoke to each of them twice daily, when they signed in, and whenever they signed out. Jon had begun to suspect that they even slept there sometimes, or worked long enough after hours that they’d have to take the fire escape out of the Institute, after Jon had locked up. Which was never as bad as he always thought it would be, especially if he moved quickly and didn’t dwell on whatever creaking noise was inevitably whining through the Victorian building.</p>
<p>He wasn’t sure what he’d do if they sought him out for a coffee, but they never gave him the opportunity. Perhaps he was safely chilly with them at the front desk, perhaps they truly only needed each other. There was truth enough in both theories, as they truly seemed to get along, and Jon truly maintained the kind of distance he now only reserved for them.</p>
<p>He observed Rosie’s commandments, sure, but he hadn’t seen anything that warranted the kind of paranoia that had fallen off her in waves.</p>
<p>In fact, it’d be a month in the job before anything like an incident occurred.</p>
<p>Perhaps it had been because he’d become comfortable, he’d thought afterwards. It began at the very end of the day. It was a cold day in March, overcast, and by the 9:00 pm close, it was dark outside. At Rosie’s command, he only turned the lights off in reception once he’d completed his circle of the Institute, and the streetlamps filled reception with their orange glow, leaving it light. So he never bothered with the torch she left.</p>
<p>He prepared to leave reception and lock the front door as he had done at the end of every working day for a month now, when, despite being sure he’d logged off and shut it down, the front desk’s computer screen lit up. It cast a pale glow, and without even thinking, Jon walked around the desk, sat down his at his chair, and looked for the notification. It wasn’t an email, as he expected. There was no notification at all.</p>
<p>He was very, very confused to see that someone had somehow changed the computer background. Instead of the commandments that he’d grown accustomed to staring at, especially when he broke one, there was just a single line of text.</p>
<p>Made you look :)</p>
<p>He was about to laugh, nervously, of course. He was about to get up and leave, having seen this strange, weird little joke. Unnerving, but nothing more, nothing he couldn’t brush off.</p>
<p>From the door behind him, the office door he’d locked from the outside not even fifteen minutes ago, he heard three knocks coming from within that office.</p>
<p>Clear as a church bell, resounding through the empty reception space, the sound set every nerve in Jon’s body alight at once. He didn’t dare to breathe, and he was struggling not to blink for fear of moving. He was trembling. He gave in and blinked. His screen had changed.</p>
<p>Look :)</p>
<p>He couldn’t if he wanted to. His body couldn’t move. He couldn’t make a sound. He wasn’t the only thing there to make one though. Once again, the cavernous hall, so empty of the people Jon saw every day, and yet, not entirely empty—not empty enough—once again this space was filled with sound. The unbearable, tentative creak of an old door opening right behind him.</p>
<p>Look</p>
<p>Said his screen. He must have blinked again, that, or the tears swimming through his eyes had given the screen enough time to change. He was hyperventilating now, air dragging through his lungs like a serrated edge against something soft.</p>
<p>He could feel the presence behind him. He knew there was nothing between him and whatever it was, and he couldn’t even look at it, not even when it asked him to.</p>
<p>He found himself wishing that before he died, he’d forgotten for even a second of his life the thing he saw when he was eight. It was all he could think of now. The sound of a knock on the door might have been made ten seconds ago, or it might have reverberated for twenty years, heard at last by Jon.</p>
<p>He knew it was behind him. The thing that had been behind that door then was behind him now. He could feel it. He clasped his fingers together, not in<em> prayer</em>, just in fear. It was behind him and it was getting closer. And still he didn’t look. He shut his eyes. This was it, and he couldn’t bear to watch. His heart thundered, but over the din of his own rushing pulse, his own body protesting that it was alive and attempting to prove that couldn’t be changed, over the sound of his own life pleading its case, Jon heard a long, scratching sound, against his desk, on either side of him.</p>
<p>He ducked under his desk, curled in on himself, those clasped hands found the back of his own neck. His heaving chest compressed against his knees while he knew that it stood over him.</p>
<p>And then the lights blazed through the dark, evaporating it. Jon was released. He sprung up from his cowering position, and before he did anything, he looked at the door. It looked the same. He tried it, and it was locked.</p>
<p>‘Very thorough investigation of your own workspace, Jon.’</p>
<p>Jon was completely ashamed to admit it, but he screamed.</p>
<p>Elias placed a settling hand on his shoulder, having seen that he was distressed. Jon jumped away from the touch, and then settled into the contact, his eyes still glassy and his breathing still frantic.</p>
<p>‘What are you still doing here?’</p>
<p>Jon muttered something approximating his account of locking up, when Elias cut him off.</p>
<p>‘It’s one in the morning. What are you still doing here?’</p>
<p>Jon barked a laugh, though it might have been a gasp.</p>
<p>‘I can’t have, have, <em>hidden</em> like that for… four hours, that’s not possible.’</p>
<p>He was incoherent, and with shaking hands, he tried to look at his phone. His battery was dead. Elias showed him his watch. Jon’s mouth went slack.</p>
<p>‘What happened, Jon?’ He asked.</p>
<p>There was so much he wanted to tell someone, and so few people he had to tell. Jon barely remembered that Elias was his boss, his universally loathed boss, and he didn’t remember the commandments either. After all, out of sight truly was out of mind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Easy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw for smoking and drinking</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They’d sat on the steps outside, together, Jon and Elias, his boss, the monster who took him apart at the interview. He offered him a cigarette, and Jon nodded in spite of it all. He’d take a swim in the guilt tomorrow, when he’d regret the rest of the night, beginning with the foolish decision to forgo the torch even for the brief moment between turning off the light and leaving the Institute.</p><p>Elias sat down on the steps in front of the Institute, unfolded himself into a reclining position and lazed on the unforgiving stone, resting on his forearms and completely stretched out, apathetic to the cold seeping through his suit. He patted the step next to him, and Jon sat, resting his elbows on his knees. Elias selected a cigarette from the box he’d merely waved at Jon, and gave it to him.  Jon placed the cigarette in his mouth, and cupped his hand around their faces as he leaned into the light Elias held up. While Elias put his lighter away, Jon took a long, deep drag and gave up a little hard-earned cognisance to the headrush.</p><p>Elias had not taken one for himself, surprising Jon. Instead, he stretched his arm around Jon’s shoulders while he breathed in the smoke and all its chemicals, and offered it back to Elias.</p><p>Sitting together in front of the imposing, pillared building of The Magnus Institute, Elias lazily draped on the steps, and Jon anxiously bunched up beside him, they passed a cigarette between them as Jon’s guilt and desire ebbed and swelled like a tide.</p><p>And Elias seemed happy enough to bend to Jon’s inane whims, relinquishing the cigarette when it was reached for, taking it back when it was spurned. Looking back, Jon wasn’t sure Elias actually took a drag himself; perhaps he did just let Jon slowly do what he was going to do anyway, what he wanted to the whole time.</p><p>‘Jon,’ Elias started, and Jon jolted. He never told Elias to call him Jon. He was glad to hear his own name though, and not that formal, office name. ‘What scared you so badly?’</p><p>‘I thought,’ he paused, trying to recollect the thoughts he had as they’d raced through his mind, but they seemed to have run on and away now that danger had passed.</p><p>‘I thought there was an intruder. I thought it was a joke at first, obviously, there was this weird little hack with the screen saver, but I think that was just to catch my attention. I don’t know why anyone would break into the Institute, we don’t have anything of particular value that any other office doesn’t, but maybe they didn’t know that we weren’t just any other office. So I must have left the window open in the office, because I heard something—someone— inside, but I keep the door locked so it must have come in from outside. And that was it. I heard a noise, in my office, and apparently I hid for four hours.’ He snorted with bitter amusement.</p><p>‘But, but I think it triggered me. And I think I did overreact to the situation at hand. But I think that’s because it triggered something.’</p><p>He swallowed thickly. He’d forgotten all about it until then, until the interview, with <em>Elias</em>, actually—</p><p>‘What did it trigger, Jon?’</p><p>Maybe Jon would have some immunity to this question and the gentle way he asked it, if Jon had ever taken himself to therapy since he’d turned eighteen. As it was, he spilled his guts to Elias right there and then.</p><p>‘I saw something when I was little. When I was eight years old. It was 1996—’</p><p>Elias’ jolted and turned to look Jon up and down, and Jon cut him off.</p><p>‘I know, I know, I don’t <em>look</em> like I was a child in the nineties,’ he said it with the weary humour of a joke long gone stale. Elias would bet Jon’s been saying it since the new millennium, or since Jon’s hair had started greying, whichever came first.</p><p> ‘Well I don’t look like I was a child in the seventies, so- ‘</p><p>‘You were <em>what</em>?’ Jon, obviously, handled surprise less discretely than Elias, but he didn’t mind when it was such a compliment.</p><p>‘I appreciate your shock, Jon.’ Elias smirked and savoured the envy radiating from Jon, who was taking in every inch of his appearance for some clue on Elias’ youthful looks. ‘But you must have realised a position of such seniority takes time to achieve. Unless you thought I was just… extremely privileged, and positively ruthless about using it.’</p><p>Jon laughed, admitted he hadn’t thought about it, and Elias smiled with him, knowing Jon was lying.</p><p>The urge to carry on talking about the past nagged at Jon though, even though the conversation had safely moved on.</p><p>‘Sorry, do you mind if I just get this off my chest? You don’t have to listen to me vent about this though, you’re not obliged.’</p><p>‘I asked, and I don’t mind at all. As long as you’re comfortable.’</p><p>It was easier to let these secrets go in the near dark, when Jon didn’t have to look at who he was talking to, just listen to the affirmative filler words reminding him that someone was listening.</p><p>‘Well it was fair to say I wasn’t the most popular child, in, the <em>nineties</em>,’ he threw his gaze at Elias, who smiled generously.</p><p>‘But there was one particular kid who hated me. He helped my grandmother with odd jobs sometimes, just a bit of cash-in-hand work, so maybe he didn’t hate me particularly, but we just saw each other more often. And he had always taken a dislike to me. Not that that was exactly unusual, mind, I wasn’t exactly popular, and at the time I thought that was because of how smart I was, but I’ve since come to the conclusion I was just a deeply annoying child.’</p><p>Once again, he snuck a look at Elias, taking a litmus test on the atmosphere. He nodded, serious enough that Jon felt the weight of his own words, but not upset. Jon wasn’t upsetting him. He carried on.</p><p>‘Well I think I was in the park, reading a book, or something, and I think he took it from me? I ended up following him, anyway, to get back whatever it was he’d taken. And it got dark, and I think I must have ended up curious about where he was going, or taking me, or leading me? I wasn’t exactly scared because I’d wander off whenever I grew bored and by the time this happened, the police had already had to return me from my explorations at least three times, but I was starting to get nervous because I wasn’t sure if this counted as wandering off and my grandmother swore that if it happened again she would begin locking me inside the house. And I fully believed her. So I suppose I was scared, but not because of anything that was happening. I didn’t know what was going to happen.’</p><p>‘Then what happened,’ Elias asked, giving Jon the courage to just say what he’d been trying not to say for his entire adult life.</p><p>‘I saw an abduction. Or a murder. I don’t actually know what happened to him, but I was a witness.’ He said it through gritted teeth. Elias didn’t flinch though, so Jon carried on.</p><p>‘And I always felt that I was the intended target, even though... I couldn’t have been. Whatever happened, it was spontaneous. Likely a break-in gone wrong. But I’ve always felt like that, that boy, whatever his name was, I can’t remember it now, I think he saved my life. Or, I thought it, at the time. It was really simple though. He took something from me, and I followed him home until I got it back. But when he got there… God I remember it so clearly— when he got home he knocked the door, three times, and it opened. But whoever answered the door wasn’t…. wasn’t meant to be there. They were just intruders, or robbers, or something, but even I knew that they weren’t meant to be there. And they pulled him through the door, slammed it shut, and he barely even screamed.’</p><p>He wasn’t looking at Elias, he was telling the whole story to a shining spot where the light caught some litter on the pavement.</p><p>‘They obviously didn’t see me, but I saw them. Or, at least a bit of them. This is the strangest thing. I saw a very long arm wearing a black jumper and a black glove, it reached out as if it was looking for something, and just pulled that boy through the door. He did, you know, start to scream but. Well they stopped that immediately, one way or another.’</p><p>He finally looked back at Elias. He was sitting right there, arm still protectively slung over Jon’s shoulders, neither of them had moved a muscle.</p><p>‘Then what did you do,’ asked Elias.</p><p>‘I called the police!’ Laughed Jon, despairingly. ‘I called the police, and I told them what happened, and as far as I know, there was no follow up. There were Missing Person posters up around the neighbourhood, I think I passed one last Christmas. And everyone else just moved on. I think, actually, that might be what scared me the most? That someone could just, oh let’s be real, die, right in front of someone else, and life goes on a human life down with a million more to go.’</p><p>The arm slid off of Jon’s shoulders, who flicked his gaze at Elias. He took Jon’s hand in his own and squeezed, reassuringly.</p><p>‘I’m sorry you went through that. It must have been hell. You strike me as someone who doesn’t talk about these things much.’</p><p>Jon nodded, smiling bitterly.</p><p>‘You’re the only person I’ve ever told, since the police, and my grandmother.’</p><p>‘That’s a terrible burden to carry.’</p><p>Jon’s eyes welled up, it just felt so good to say these things aloud, and to be believed implicitly. He turned to look at Elias, who was looking at him appreciatively. Jon blinked. </p><p>‘Thank you, for,’ he gesticulated for a moment, trying to catch the thoughts, put them into words.</p><p>It would be easy, he thought. It would be easy, so he did it. His two hands each found a mark on Elias, one flush against his face and the other just touching his jaw, and Jon leant in and kissed him.</p><p>It was easy. Elias kissed back, gently, and carded his fingers through Jon’s hair, pulling it free of the hair tie holding it back all day. Jon closed his eyes and Elias kissed him, until he pulled away.</p><p>Jon’s eyes widened, and he sat up straight, taking a deep breath.</p><p>‘I am so sorry,’ he started, but Elias smiled at him, sincerely.</p><p>‘Don’t be. I was just going to ask if you’d like to come with me, I’m going for a drink. Unless, of course, you’d rather go home—’</p><p>‘I’d love to, as long as you have a place in mind, I don’t know anywhere here.’</p><p>Elias was clearly in the mood to give Jon everything he wanted, and suggesting a drink was only the last of his plans for that night. The second those lights had come on, the overwhelming urge to run to drink and cigarettes and had left Jon weak. Even this, this desire for closeness was one of the habits Jon had broken long ago. His resolves had shattered in his hands, and he’d pick up the shards tomorrow, cutting himself on the sharp edges of his own broken expectations. Tonight, he let those expectations, and standards, and resolutions and fail safes and boundaries and defences fall. He dropped them all like an expensive vase, just to watch it break.</p><p>‘I know somewhere we can talk.’ Elias said it so coolly, but laced their fingers together, and Elias was pulling him up, and it took him about five steps away from the Institute to realise what a bad, stupid idea this was. They fell into step.</p><p>They walked to a bar Elias knew and Jon didn’t.</p><p>They hadn’t untangled their hands, Jon realised suddenly. He wasn’t even drunk. He was just flooded with adrenaline and holding hands with his boss after the most frightening experience of his life. They were going to drink together, and talk, and they’d already kissed. Jon smiled, quietly, and looked at all the apartments and flats with their arched doorways and brick veneers as they passed.</p><p>‘So, what about you then,’ Jon asked. Elias looked amused.</p><p>‘What about me?’</p><p>‘Well you seem sane, and yet, here you are, head of the Institute by seniority, not bias. Something must have drawn you to the, uh, the academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal.’</p><p>Elias laughed, and playfully swatted Jon.</p><p>‘Don’t be so facetious! Unlike you, Jon, I simply believe in the paranormal. I think it’s worthy of study. It needs to be discovered.’</p><p>Jon scoffed.</p><p>‘Okay then,’ he said, ‘but what inspired this belief. You don’t just wake up one morning like, ah! Ghosts! I’m going to study this for the rest of my life and spearhead the leading institution and direct it’s research!’</p><p>Elias’ smile became pinched.</p><p>‘These things are often very difficult, and very complicated, and the night is young, and we may yet enjoy ourselves.’</p><p>Jon swallowed an apology and nodded instead. Leaving well enough alone was a speciality of his.</p><p>They stepped into the bar, and at first Jon didn’t understand how this was a place they could talk. It was loud, teaming with the nightlife Jon hadn’t seen since he was an undergrad, and even then, not often. People were chatting, and drinking, and so vibrant with life and alcohol.</p><p>Then Jon understood.</p><p>‘If you do insist upon getting to know me, Jon,’ he smiled conspiratorially, ‘you could buy me a drink. Surprise me.’</p><p>No one was paying them the slightest bit of notice, and Elias had just proven it. He found a quiet booth, and Jon waited by the bar, decoding the menu, trying to figure what Elias might like, and what Jon might want to get across.</p><p>It also gave him time to think of a few more questions. He’d been so grateful at the time, but it was worth questioning exactly what had Elias been doing in the Institute at one AM?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Too Easy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>cw drinking, sex</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jon was drunk by the time he’d asked. He knew he was drunk, it was obvious even to him, observing himself detachedly and powerless against his own embarrassing inclinations.</p><p>He’d given up on finding a way to surprise Elias and settled on getting a drink he knew he liked, and hopefully one that wouldn’t get him too drunk too quickly. He’d gone for a rum and coke; it was hard to complain about, and he at least liked it the last time he was drinking.</p><p>‘That’s sweet,’ Elias said, when Jon had brought the drinks over to the table, barely spilling them.</p><p>‘Hah thanks- ‘</p><p>‘The drink is very sweet, it’s coke.’</p><p>Jon flushed, mortified.</p><p>‘Actually its Pepsi, they didn’t have coke.’</p><p>Elias raised an eyebrow and Jon started drinking quickly and rather heavily.</p><p>‘Why were you in the Institute at one in the morning?’ He asked, when he was drunk.</p><p>Elias’ face didn’t change, and Jon carried on, alcohol settling in his veins like a cat in a warm lap.</p><p>‘You told me off, came pretty close to firing me- ‘</p><p>‘I wasn’t going to fire you,’</p><p>‘Even though I was having a panic attack- ‘</p><p>‘I didn’t know you were having a panic attack,’</p><p>‘And I didn’t even ask what you were doing there. You were also there, you know?’</p><p>‘Yes Jon, I realise.’</p><p>‘So what was going on?’</p><p>Elias finally drank.</p><p>If Jon was paranoid, it looked like he was taking a second to set his story straight.</p><p>‘There was a power cut at closing time, and it’s difficult to get an electrician out at nine o’clock. Do you know how difficult it is to get an electrician out of hours?’</p><p>Jon drank.</p><p>‘Can’t say I do, no.’</p><p>Elias knew that, otherwise he wouldn’t have banked on it.</p><p>‘And even though I might be a useless aristocratic man,’</p><p>Jon made a noise that sounded suspiciously like affirmation.</p><p>‘I thought I’d try and figure out how the back-up electric system worked. And you’re lucky it only took me three hours.’</p><p>‘It was actually four and they were all terrible.’</p><p>‘Naturally,’ Elias said dryly, and Jon felt he’d perhaps ridden too far on Elias’ good humour.</p><p>‘I’m obviously still glad you figured it, though.’</p><p>Elias smiled and Jon could breathe again. He could also drink again, so he did, finishing his double in a hurry. Elias had barely sipped his. Jon was left with an empty glass and the knowledge that it would be wrong to immediately buy another round.</p><p>And Jon was satisfied with the answer. There was a power cut, Elias worked late every day anyway so if there was a power cut at closing time Elias would be there, and as the Head of the Institute, he probably ought to be the one to sort it out.</p><p>Jon was satisfied that his own fear was a self-contained issue. He was still on a date with his boss he’d already kissed when he was sober, but he couldn’t say that was necessarily scary, just foolish.</p><p>He thought he’d lighten the mood.</p><p>‘And what is up with the archives?’</p><p>Elias smiled again, and laughed a little.</p><p><em>Oh good</em>, thought Jon, a little giddy. The alcohol was settling less like a cat and more like a boulder. It’d been years since he’d sworn off it, and he was just starting to remember why.</p><p>‘Are you curious about the archives, Jon?’</p><p>‘God no,’ he said. His head swam. ‘Rosie was just very, very insistent that I don’t go near them. The archivists <em>and</em> their archives.’</p><p>Elias leaned back in the booth and sighed. Jon felt bad. He hadn’t meant to bring work into this, he thought he’d just be… maybe mildly catty. Maybe share something behind everyone else’ back.</p><p>‘The archives are a mystery to the best of us, including our new head archivist. Our previous head archivist left everything in such a mess, no one knows what’s going on down there. It’s very strange of Rosie to take so much… offence to the archives though, she never had anything to do with them.’</p><p>There were many strands to pull at here, and Jon knew, or hoped, he wouldn’t be in a situation to be this honest and vulnerable again. The possibilities were limitless. At the same time, he had to pick carefully, if he picked at all the threads then…</p><p>He tried to remember the consequences but they all seemed so elusive.</p><p>Then Elias would think he was nosy. He knew there was more to it than that, but he stuck with the tangible. He decided to pick just one of the strands he wanted to pursue.</p><p>‘Did Rosie often take offence to things?’</p><p>Elias laughed, rather openly, and Jon flushed at his failing powers of articulation. He felt like a student again. He felt like this was the worst class in the world, and he’d offered a wrong answer. He realised he wanted to impress Elias and he simultaneously realised Elias already knew that. He bit his lip, a nervous habit he’d picked up since his life began making him nervous. It was fair to say this was a lifelong habit.</p><p>‘Frequently and often. She was very paranoid, and very, very involved in the process of taking statements. Maybe she’d have been happier in research. Are you happy, Jon?’</p><p>His eyes widened.</p><p>‘Am I, am I <em>happy</em>?’</p><p>Elias nodded, eyebrows raised. Jon looked around the busy room of happy strangers. They were happy. They were drinking and trying to fuck each other and some were even content to dance, or even just talk, like Jon. They were happy. Was Jon happy?</p><p>‘Generally, or specifically now?’</p><p>Elias laughed again, and with a little qualification, a little operationalising of the terms, Jon could say he was happy, actually.</p><p>‘If you’re thinking about it this much, then maybe you have your answer.’</p><p>Jon smiled, but his brow creased. He felt so confused.</p><p>Elias leaned in a little, just as he had before.</p><p>‘You should be happy, Jon.’</p><p>His breath hitched.</p><p>‘Do you want another drink?’</p><p>Jon looked away, Elias’ gaze was intense, suddenly.</p><p>‘Will it make me happy?’ He asked wryly, looking into Elias’ empty glass, smile turned up playfully.</p><p>No, he couldn’t meet Elias’ gaze.</p><p>‘Shall I surprise you?’</p><p>Jon nodded. He loved surprises, and this whole night had been one long one.</p><p>Elias stalked off, and Jon called him back.</p><p>‘Take the empties back, you prick!’</p><p>Elias grinned, taking the two empty glasses from Jon’s gesturing hands. He pinched them in one hand, and straightened Jon’s collar. Jon didn’t breathe until he was released from Elias’ feather light grasp. He laughed.</p><p>‘Surprised you. You’re too easy, really.’</p><p> Elias leaned languidly against the table, thigh pressing into Jon’s side. Jon swallowed thickly. </p><p>‘I’m not easy.’ He said it slowly, perhaps after too much deliberation. Or perhaps he denied it too quickly.</p><p>Either way, Elias looked him up and down as if it showed up on his very body that, perhaps Jon <em>was </em>easy. He remembered that first week of university. He’d barely remembered them after they’d happened, he was amazed he could recall them now. Their faces, their hands, the multicoloured lights in the nightclub he had never returned to with friends he’d never hang out with again. The weeks that followed, the men, the women, everyone else. That desperate hook up with Georgie that turned into something more, less than romance but just off-friendship, their explosive break up and all the fallout...</p><p>
  <em>Don’t correct Elias.</em>
</p><p>She was paranoid, he had reassured himself of that, paranoid and jealous that she wasn’t researching herself. But there was something in that little tip, at least. He hadn’t necessarily wanted to remember that, the memories were hot to the touch and Jon had long since learned to flinch from heat for fear of scalding himself.</p><p>‘That’s a shame,’ Elias flirted, and Jon blinked. Under the table, his fingernails dug into his palms. He blinked again and Elias was gone, like a dream, and Jon looked at his phone. It switched on now, he must have been mistaken when he thought it dead when he’d tried to check the time in the Institute. He checked it now, instead.</p><p>He hadn’t even been in the bar for half an hour.</p><p>He actually had a text, too. The night had many surprises, it seemed.</p><p>It was from Tim. Jon didn’t open it.</p><p>He browsed Twitter, and delighted in being able to read still, at least.</p><p>Then Elias was back. He brought a whole bottle of wine with him, on ice.</p><p>‘What the fuck?’ Jon breathed.</p><p>‘Surprise.’</p><p>‘That’s expensive,’ Jon intoned, hating his own emphasis. It was important, but it should go unsaid. Elias shrugged him off.</p><p>‘It’s nice though. You’ll like it.’</p><p>‘Is that an order?’ Jon laughed. That way, Elias could do what he liked with the comment. He smirked.</p><p>‘Could be. Do you <em>take</em> orders?’</p><p>It was the easiest question that night.</p><p>‘Absolutely not.’</p><p>Elias’ attention was intense, and intoxicating. Jon hadn’t even felt this scrutinised in the interview. Then his lips curled.</p><p>‘Perfect.’</p><p>They left half the bottle on the table by the time they left the bar. The kissing had got dirty half-way through the taxi to Elias’ flat. Jon was self-conscious, but it was a rush, to look out of the corner of his eye and see someone see someone press an open kiss to his neck while he tried to muffle his moan against the back of his hand.</p><p>Because that’s all Elias was to him. To Jon, Elias was just someone.</p><p>He could do this.</p><p>A thigh slipped between his, a hand pressed on the small of his back, he was pressed to the corner between the car seat and the window, and the condensation ran down his neck. A hand ran through his hair, it was damp and curling. Elias kissed him deeply, and Jon’s eyes fluttered shut, and stayed that way until Elias paid the driver. Jon hoped he gave him a tip for his discretion.</p><p>Then again, they’d given him a show. Maybe he didn’t need a tip.</p><p>They were half-way up the stairs when clothes started to come off. It was Elias, tugging his blazer off, slinging it over his shoulder, and popping the buttons of his shirt open, leaving a thick strip of skin to dazzle Jon. He pushed Elias against the wall, trying not to trip up or down the stairs, and collided with his collar bones. Making the best of a good situation, Jon left a hickey there, and scratched Elias’ back under his open shirt, just for good measure. Elias gasped in pleasure, the sound echoed in the stairwell, and dragged Jon by the wrist up the stairs.</p><p>‘Why do you have to live in the penthouse,’ Jon huffed, hands reaching around Elias’ waist.</p><p>He expected something about the view.</p><p>‘You can fuck in the windows and anyone could see you. You could see anyone.’</p><p>Jon jaw fell open. The thought resounded through his head.</p><p>‘We can’t do that, anyone- ‘</p><p>‘Yes, exactly. Think about it.’</p><p>Jon laughed, dryly, ‘Can’t stop thinking about it, now.’</p><p>Elias pulled him around a corridor, through a door, and over, onto the floor, straddling him quickly. Jon only half hoped the door locked behind them. There was one very deeply intense moment between them. The eye-contact seemed to ricochet around the room, and Jon was captivated by Elias. Then, torturously deliberate, he ground back against him, and Jon shuddered. He sat up, pulled Elias’ shirt off his shoulders, leaving it pooling on the floor, and carried on leaving love bites along the contours of his collarbones.</p><p>Then he saw. The living room was entirely closed in glass. Though eventually the curved, thick windows were interrupted by solidly brick walls, there was at least 180 degrees of total exposure.</p><p>From here, Jon could see all of London behind Elias’ body. Every light in the city became a twinkling, knowing eye, and Jon pushed Elias down onto his own living room floor.</p><p>He felt alive, rocking against Elias’ body, feeling the friction with half an eye on the window. Elias watched him watch, and left matching marks on Jon’s neck, his jaw, and pulled his hair.</p><p>He started to slip the bright green jumper off Jon, that came off easily enough. The shirt was more of an effort, Jon started to protest but broke off in a moan with a certain flick of his hips. He decided he wasn’t shyer about his body than he was aroused.</p><p>‘Fuck,’ he gasped, burying his face in the crook of Elias’ neck. Elias traced his back, leaving thick, angry tracts when the mood took him, and Jon rewarded him with a surprised gasp every time. Tilting his face up allowed Jon to kiss his throat, testing his teeth against the skin there. Then Jon went down, kissing his chest, his ribs, his hipbones, hesitantly at first, gaining confidence as Elias urged him further, stroking his cheek before he tangled his fingers in his hair and pulled hard enough to elicit a cry of real pain.</p><p>Better. Elias could see the view when Jon made him roll his eyes. Looking at the skyline, gripping Jon’s pretty hair, Elias came in Jon’s mouth.</p><p>That was one of the better orgasms of his life. He didn’t consider letting Jon know that, and the idea of reciprocating was almost laughable.</p><p>He pulled Jon up by the jaw, and he was glad to be led. His eyes were so pretty when they were pricking with tears, and just this side of glassy. He kissed him, and tasted himself. Jon rutted against him, and Elias decided that was his prerogative.</p><p>‘I’ll allow it,’ he breathed.</p><p>‘<em>Fuck,</em>’ his pace picked up. Elias glanced down, saw Jon’s belt was undone, and he’d taken little other action towards his own pleasure. He pursed his lips.</p><p>‘You’re so stupid,’ he tested the waters, and Jon closed his eyes. He dipped a hand inside Jon’s waistband, and the muscles in his arms went taut.  ‘You don’t even know how to get off, do you? You think if you keep doing this you’ll get there, and you won’t.’</p><p>He moaned against Elias’ ear, and bit the sensitive spot just below it. Elias wrapped a leg around Jon’s waist. Gasps became ragged, became moans, began to bleed together into one note.</p><p>‘I knew, the second I saw you, that you were waiting for this, for someone to just give you a chance to show you what you were really like, beneath all those buttoned collars and stern glares and all that learning,’</p><p>‘<em>Fuck!</em>’</p><p>‘All that vocabulary, wasted on you. Because you’re just a slut. That’s why I wanted you, Jon. That’s why I put you in reception, you’re a slut and I wanted one around the place.’</p><p>The friction intensified, and Jon’s moans had become aspirant again. He was so close. Elias knew his head was spinning, his head was rushing, from all the gasping and all the drinking. He placed a hand around his throat and squeezed, oxygen deprivation heightening the sensation. Jon choked, completely unprepared.</p><p>‘Didn’t even really care to fuck you. Just thought you were nice to look at. And I knew you wanted to be seen.’</p><p>Jon’s hips stuttered, backing against Elias’ calf crushing him back against his body. He fell laxly onto Elias, who wrapped his arms around Jon, Jon who was shuddering with pleasure against Elias’ whole body. Completely spent, Elias let him lay there, in his arms, on the floor, for at least a few minutes. Before Elias would drag him to bed, he heard Jon murmur something against his ear.</p><p>‘Hm?’</p><p>‘That was just dirty talk. What you said. It <em>was</em>, right?’</p><p>The uncertainty in his voice was a delight, and Elias smiled at the ceiling.</p><p>‘Obviously, Jon. I couldn’t do that, contrary to popular belief, I’m not an absolute ruler. There are guidelines. You got the job because you deserved it. And I had nothing to do with that, you don’t actually work for me, remember?’</p><p>Jon remembered. Contented, he allowed himself to be put to bed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. See Better Blind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Elias didn’t sleep. That wasn’t Jon’s fault. In fact, lying next to Jon, Elias closed his eyes for the very first time since they saw out of this skull. And still, from the nine other pairs of unclosing eyes, Elias watched the scene they’d made together. It looked intimate, from afar. Watching himself from outside of himself, from a well-placed album cover, Elias bathed in nostalgia for a long dead humanity he’d enjoyed centuries ago.</p><p>Elias was surprised by the night’s outcome, but since he’d promoted Tim, Elias was beginning to expect surprises.</p><p>Tim was unruly and unpredictable. His motivations had seemed so simple to Elias, but perhaps that was only because they seemed simple to Tim. It was usually so easy to manipulate the human anxieties for the safety of their families, but Elias hadn’t known Tim’s brother was already dead, and, totally useless for Elias’ plans. He hadn’t known because Tim had refused to accept it. Elias and Tim had truly realised Danny was dead on the same day, and they both accepted the news with a quiet, furious defeat.</p><p>At interview, Elias didn’t know that Tim wanted revenge more than he feared what took Danny, because that was new. When Elias interviewed him, Tim was only human, and he was comfortable with his life, he was in the very last stage of grief.</p><p>And with the power the archives were beginning to bestow on Tim, they now both knew that he didn’t fear being watched. Tim participated in the watching as a simple means to the crude end of making the things that ruined his life suffer. Elias knew that Tim was going to make so very many terrible things suffer. His focus channelled the Eye, he was finding the statements that served his purposes, which made Tim very dangerous to Elias. Following up these statements was giving Tim ample opportunity to cut his teeth with his new powers and he still didn’t understand what they were. As far as Tim knew, the police were suddenly more compliant than ever, his flirtation suddenly had a force to it. His power was growing, and no one knew what a threat he posed to everyone around him, so no one was keeping him in check, especially not Tim.</p><p>Elias’ plans had begun to collapse the second he chose a replacement for Gertrude rather than her opposite.</p><p>Elias began to admit something to himself, then, as he lay awake pretending to sleep next to Jon. Elias had lied to Jon. He didn’t know anything about Jon when they first met at the interview. He had looked for the marks he was looking for, for the experience he was seeking out, for motivations and pathologies, and Elias had found nothing but an eccentric, self-contained man who needed a job. But he looked an excellent candidate for Peter’s new Solum scheme, so he passed his CV over as he passed over Jon. Elias found everything he was looking for in Tim, and it simply transpired that Elias’ criteria was superficial.</p><p>The thoughts of Tim, and Jon, and the decisions he’d made didn’t keep Elias from sleep, but they prevented him from relaxing as he should.</p><p>Tim’s self-contained inner drive was so rigid, and so unlike the malleable external motivations Elias excelled in manipulating. It seemed that, though he was obviously marked by the Stranger, Tim would need more handling, more moulding, more impressing upon than Elias could achieve from afar. Though he’d been hoping Sasha and Martin could be useful if not to Tim than at least for manipulating him, he saw their camaraderie was fragile, and he couldn’t bet that Tim wouldn’t get them killed before Elias would have them dead. If Tim’s power was consolidated like that, if Tim had a fraction of Elias’ power before he had him marked by any of the Dread Powers of Elias’ choosing, Elias’ plans, maybe even his life, would be over.</p><p>When Elias had cut the wires in the electricity box, he’d only been trying to draw out whatever might be lurking in the archives, he’d only been trying to create a new opportunity to exploit. He knew exactly where the archivist and his assistants were, scattered around the archives on a long night filing. Elias knew how eager the things in the dark were to kill and hurt all that was important to the Eye, and he waited until he knew his plan had blossomed into fruition and he had new information to work with.</p><p>It took him four hours to turn the emergency lighting system and accept that nothing wished Tim any ill-intent yet, nothing other than Elias, at least. And there, cowering before his very eyes, was Jon. The long, deep claw marks in the desk really could have been made by anything, so it was hard to tell what new mark Jon now bore, but Elias’ blood boiled. Why on earth would something go for the receptionist when his Head Archivist was so close at hand?</p><p>Elias liked to think that he was angry that this insignificant human had derailed his plans, but Elias knew himself better than that. He was angry that Tim had derailed his plans, and he was angry he couldn’t kill Tim, and he was delighted that he could kill Jon. Jon held no importance in Elias’ plan for the world. Receptionists were significantly easier to replace than Archivists, after all.</p><p>Elias had teased a statement from Jon, simply feeling his patron’s appetite and deciding on killing two birds with one stone, satisfying his own disappointment as well as his God’s appetite. The first story Jon told him, about reception, was a lie. Clearly, Jon didn’t understand what happened, and the Eye fed on the kind of understanding Jon lacked. Then, it seemed Jon tried again, offered him something real. His oldest fear. But, his natural, human experience with natural horror left Elias bored and it didn’t seem to inspire the Eye either, so he made up his mind to snap Jon’s neck there on the Institute steps.</p><p>Maybe it showed on his face. Jon did catch him looking, after all.</p><p>Being human though, Jon had confused one appetite with another, and Elias was caught off guard. He sunk into the first kiss he’d indulged in years with the resolve to kill Jon later, not even much later, just down an alley, somewhere inconspicuous. To his frustration, Jon reminded Elias of his own parasitic dependence on human knowledge and perception, of his own inhuman limits, his own inhuman physicality. He couldn’t feed off what wasn’t true, and Jon did not know the truth, so Jon couldn’t feed him. At least, he couldn’t feed Elias anything his God could metabolise.</p><p>The desire for a different kind of knowledge, a different kind of knowing permeated Elias, diffused through the human contact Jon offered to Elias’ human body.</p><p>Though Elias remained clear headed, he was inevitably drawn into his own game of pretend. Maintaining Jon’s sense of security seemed to reassure Elias. He had to admit, it was nice to live for a night as he imagined Elias might, if Elias was only Elias and no one more. It was nice to seduce and be seduced, but ultimately, it was only a game. Once they were out of sight, once they returned to Elias’ domain, he was going to pull every fear from Jon at once and feel his heart race under his hands until it faltered and failed in his chest.</p><p>It was a half-hearted promise even to himself, and though the night had offered many surprises, Elias deviation from this plan was not one of them.</p><p>When he had Jon where no one could save him, where he had no chance of walking away if Elias didn’t allow it, he looked into Jon’s eyes and saw something he couldn’t eat. The possibility didn’t just intrigue him, it frightened him. And he did <em>serve</em> his patron, after all. He decided to suffer the fear of being known, at least for a night.</p><p>He sighed. <em>Can’t win them all</em>.</p><p>He relaxed again, and let Jon’s unconscious, empty state of mind brush against his own. It was a vicarious form of sleep, but one he enjoyed, on occasions like this. The quiet, empty mind Elias enjoyed was so peaceful compared to his own, thoughts and doubts and plans flickering like fairy lights.</p><p>Then, his eyes, his real eyes, opened. He looked at Jon suspiciously. He wasn’t dreaming. Whatever story Jon had told him about his childhood terror, he wasn’t revisiting it in his dreams as all of Elias’ living victims ought to, at this time of night. Somehow, Jon had cheated the Eye.</p><p>Elias wracked Jon’s unconscious mind for the misery and fear that ought to have been Elias’, and he turned up empty handed. Not without fear, of course, but not the specific one Elias was looking for. He was faced with the possibility that Jon had lied to him <em>without</em> him knowing.</p><p>The thought was like ice. It shouldn’t be possible. Now he had to find out what had really happened, if it was not what Jon claimed. He pressed deep into Jon’s mind, delving through the layers of Jon’s conscious and unconsciousness, seeing the twitching wants for love, for recognition, for friends, setting them aside and looking for the memories Jon held dear. He saw his graduation, his first kiss, the day he left home. Elias looked past the fear those memories held, searching in earnest for more than the natural fear that defined Jon and his mundane, restricted little life, for the secrets that Jon kept even from himself.</p><p>He realised he was looking in the wrong place. Elias’ understanding of biology, and neurochemistry, and psychology was out of date at best, and total nonsense at worst. So, when he visualised extending the reach of his Beholding into Jon’s very eyes, to see what Jon saw without the interpretation of his consciousness and the repression of his unconscious, Elias was aware that he was only visualising the incomprehensible in a way he could comprehend.</p><p>Having achieved this trick, he now knew that Jon had done the same thing when he was eight years old, and again at age 28, last night. Jon had perfected the art of living in the real, tangible world, so Elias had only seen real, tangible, and ultimately dull things in Jon’s mind. But Jon’s real, tangible world was as much a delusion as he had believed The Spider to be.</p><p>Elias saw it all through Jon’s eyes. The Leitner, the door, and the other boy who took Jon’s place in the Spider’s lair. Jon did not believe his eyes, but in the more open state of unconscious, and with Elias’ guidance, the truth they held was coaxed out into Jon’s mind.</p><p>Jon flinched in his sleep, and Elias withdrew from his deep unconscious. Jon’s fear was like the iridescent pattern on the surface of a bubble. Being held at bay at all times for a lifetime, these recollections seemed to fade away when they were not brought to light, and Jon’s mind was clear once more.</p><p>Elias, once again, had much to think about.</p><p>The Spider had sent Jon to Elias a mere 15 minutes too late, bearing a hidden kiss Elias could never hope to find without knowing what he was looking for. If that was not a message, Elias did not know what a message was. He was going to kill him, as a final correspondence with the entity Jon unwittingly served.</p><p>Elias couldn’t even blame himself. It was all a machination of the Web. Tim had been perfect for the role, on paper. He was embroiled in the Institute, ruled by fear, he had the perfect motivation to disrupt the rituals and get himself marked. And his only loved ones existed in the archives. And Jon was an outsider. Elias hadn’t observed Jon for years like he had Tim. And, unlike Tim, Jon was an ordinary academic, a sceptic, marked but imperceptibly so.</p><p>Elias worried about the possibility that he was only seeing the beginning of the problems Jonathan Sims presented.</p><p>Best not to see those problems into fruition, best to murder him now, in his bed, before it was too late.</p><p>He sat up, looming over the resting figure of Jon. He was sleeping, breathing softly, completely devoid of thought or perception. What difference would dying make? When Elias would overwhelm his body with his lifetime of horrors, far past the state of anxiety and into cardiac arrest, what difference would it make to Jon, if he didn’t know it wasn’t just another bad dream. He rested his hand on Jon’s head, and began to call up the memories, to bombard him with them all at once until they overcame him once and for all.</p><p>He twisted a strand of Jon’s black hair around a finger, and thought carefully before he made a rash decision like that. Then he made up his mind, and lay back down.</p><p>Closing his eyes, Elias recalled that he had left the Institute in darkness to see what would present himself. And here was Jon. He had an archivist who’s vision needed hindering, and a man who seemed impervious to seeing the supernatural. There may yet be a part for Jon to play in Elias’ plans. Perhaps Jon was not a message.</p><p>Perhaps he was a gift.</p><p>Jon finally started to stir at half eight in in the morning. He planted his face against the warm body next to him, and he felt Elias begin to show signs of waking.</p><p>‘Morning,’ Elias muttered against him. Jon didn’t respond, and seemed to carry on sleeping, as if stirred from his slumber only to return comfortably.</p><p>Elias knew he was awake because the barrage of mundane anxiety refreshed him from his rest. He let his mind wander into Jon’s to see what he was worried about. He’d overlooked his mortal concerns too many times, and ignored the Web in doing so. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.</p><p>Jon woke up hungover and ashamed. The two went hand in hand. How could he feel hungover without being ashamed? He lacked moderation, judgement, discipline, and all he could do about it was feel ashamed. The concerns about his job started to creep over him like spiders. He tormented himself with questions about whether he could still work at the Institute, about what he’d do if he was asked to leave, about how he’d even still work there if he wasn’t fired. He pictured a working life where Elias had certain expectations of him, and his stomach turned. He imagined Elias asking him to leave, and he felt cold. But worse of all, the scenario he dreaded walking into on Monday above all, was the thought that everyone would know. That he’d never be taken seriously again, that he’d lost his credibility as an employee, that everyone else would think he was just… ornamentation.</p><p>Elias gently shook him awake, and it was no longer acceptable for Jon to ignore him while clinging to his comforting warmth. He peeled open his eyes, unready and unwilling to face up to the morning.</p><p>Elias didn’t look like he was judging him.</p><p>‘You’re welcome to sleep in, but I’m getting up now. Do you drink coffee?’</p><p>Relief coursed through him, and he answered too honestly.</p><p>‘Not typically, but I feel like shit. Will it help?’</p><p>Elias tucked Jon’s hair behind his ear, and in his hangover, Jon leaned into the touch. Elias smiled.</p><p>‘Maybe, maybe not. Would you like any painkillers?’</p><p>Jon nodded gratefully, and Elias got up. Unlike Jon, Elias had slept naked, and felt no reservations about getting out of bed and slipping on a dressing gown. Jon didn’t watch. It was the morning after, he felt like hell, and as kind to him as Elias was being, Jon was scared of what the day might hold.</p><p>Elias knew Jon didn’t sleep while he left him. Once his thoughts had started to turn in his head, Jon wouldn’t rest again. Elias made a strong, sweet, milky coffee that belied how much caffeine was really in it, and he brought up a glass of water and an unopened packet of painkillers. His bedroom up the stairs streamed with light from the great, exposing skylight and the glass balcony door. That skylight was Elias’ favourite eye in his home, it was engraved on the glass, made visible only with focus. From it, he watched Jon tear himself apart for the mistakes that saved his life last night, though he would never know that. Elias watched Jon curl up on himself, try to sooth his aching head and churning stomach.</p><p>He left his own coffee on the side, both hands and two pockets filled with offerings for Jon. It was easy to devote himself to this play at intimacy when it was pleasant. And as he played this part, he realised that Jon’s part in Elias’ play was becoming clearer.</p><p>It would be so much harder for Tim to realise Elias wasn’t human if he was truly entwined with one, one that couldn’t see his monstrosity for what it was. Jon was a normal human who would only ever see Elias as one too.</p><p>He set Jon’s coffee and water on the bedside table next to him, placing the packet of tablets next to the glass, and the cigarettes next to them. Jon looked resigned to them.</p><p>‘I’m trying to quit.’ He said flatly.</p><p>Elias reached to take them back, but Jon shook his head.</p><p>‘Tomorrow’s struggle?’ Elias offered, plucking a cigarette from the pack for himself, opening the balcony door and letting the fresh air above London’s streets into his room. Jon breathed in deeply, nodded, and took a cigarette and the coffee with him, outside.</p><p>Jon hadn’t removed his trousers last night, and in the time it took Elias to leave the room and start spying on him, Jon had found his jumper and put it back on. The shirt was likely still in the living room somewhere.</p><p>Elias let his dress gown slip open, without self-consciousness, and Jon looked without interest.</p><p>They smoked in silence. Elias knew Jon had something to say, and he wanted Jon to say it. While he waited for Jon to swallow his pride and break the silence, Elias solidified his plans. If he could somehow start a relationship with Jon, he’d have an alibi, someone on his side, and, knowing now that Jon believed his own perceptions, even if Tim tried using his new powers of Beholding on Jon, he’d only find whatever Elias wanted in Jon’s mind.</p><p>It was a pleasant plan, one that gave him an escape from his darkest purposes while pushing them inexorably forward.</p><p>‘I’m asexual,’ Jon said. He sounded defiant, but Elias had been supping on the steady waves of anxiety bounding out from Jon.</p><p>This may or may not be a complication.</p><p>‘I see. So last night,’</p><p>‘It was libidinal. I’m not sex repulsed, I just only do it for its… physicality. And even then, only certain acts, and only under certain circumstances. Being honest, it only appeals to me when I’m… somewhat under pressure in life, and I need a break? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it happened, and I wouldn’t take it back,’ Jon smoked to buy time and Elias knew that while Jon was not lying, he was not telling the full truth.</p><p>Jon only regretted that he’d fallen into the arms of his boss, his colleague, the man he saw every day, that he’d compromised his workplace, that he’d dragged pleasure into business into all his oldest fears of being judged and seen. He regretted the nasty complications, external to their little tryst.</p><p>It was almost painful for Elias to see the perfect conduit of his plans just beyond their scope. But Jon had a role now. Elias had made a role for Jon.</p><p>‘Jon, I think I’m on the same page.’</p><p>Jon didn’t react outwardly, and his silence was wary.</p><p>‘Sex is just something people can do, it doesn’t have to be more than libidinal, as you put it.’</p><p>Jon nodded. He still seemed doubtful. Elias decided to finish the conversation.</p><p>‘I just ask one thing of you, Jon.’</p><p>His head snapped around to look at him. He looked almost composed, but his knuckles stuck out where he gripped the railing.</p><p>‘I’d just really appreciate it if this didn’t get out. I would really hate for people to judge this as something it wasn’t, or assume I regularly sleep with staff. I… don’t, it’s unprofessional, and though I have no regrets, these circumstances put me in a position I’d rather not see judged. It’s not entirely my decision, of course, I’m not going to ask you to sign a non-disclosure form, but if it is all the same to you, can this stay between us?’</p><p>As before, Jon didn’t much react outwardly. His body may have gone lax with relief, his released breath may only be visible by the long cloud of smoke, but those were small signs compared to the symphony of hope and disbelief in Jon’s mind that he may have done something as stupid as fucking his boss <em>and</em> gotten away with it without even trying.</p><p>‘We may be on the same page after all. I think I’d like to keep this quiet too.’</p><p>Elias smiled, placidly, and eventually, Jon would find all his clothes and leave without showering at Elias’ and drag his protesting body to the Tube and finally back to his own shitty apartment. And Jon would not know what Elias, or anything else in the archive had in store for him come Monday.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Codes of Conduct</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On Monday, Jon still felt grotty. Saturday night had left him drunk and gleeful and seeking intimacy he didn’t usually care for, and Sunday had left him miserable. But by Monday, he felt under the weather, but typically grumpy. He felt like himself, feeling like shit.</p>
<p>He braced himself against the spring weather that didn’t let up from winter at all. Spring, he thought, didn’t know it was not still winter, and sometimes it showed. Monday always thought it was winter. It was the day after the day after the night before, and Jon still felt wretched.</p>
<p>Sure, in university, he’d learned to drink, but he’d never, ever gotten any better with hangovers. They just lasted, and as he’d only gotten older, they’d only gotten worse. He was sure he’d feel better tomorrow, but struggling with his failing umbrella until he reached the Tube, which was packed, to go to work where he would work all day, until he came home, Jon felt tomorrow was an eon away.</p>
<p>Little did he know that this distracting, all-consuming physical discomfort was a blessing. When he did get into work, at the unconscionable hour of 7.00 am, Jon was so distracted he hardly noticed that he piled his scratched up desk with administrative paperwork. He didn’t do it all at once. He looked at all the forms that needed filling, and happened to place them over the claw marks left on his desk on Saturday, without even looking at them. Once the desk was covered with clutter, he failed to notice that it hadn’t always been.</p>
<p>Jon was a survivor, and by looking at nothing in detail, by keeping his eyes unfocused when they ought to, and by rarely questioning his instincts and his body’s follow through upon certain impulses, Jon had lived, if not exactly happily then safely, so far. Once his desk was full, and the claw marks he refused to look at were totally obscured by blank statement forms, Jon was happy to sit at his desk and begin the day.</p>
<p>He opened the computer on the front desk, and there in front of him was the screensaver, still proudly commanding him to</p>
<p>Look.</p>
<p>As it had on Saturday night. As it always had.</p>
<p>Jon didn’t change it, he simply started making a cup of tea in the office, as if for a subject.</p>
<p>The thought brought him a certain modicum of pain. He reassured himself that his own experience on Saturday was not paranormal. Though Jon had found his window locked when he conducted his Monday morning investigation, he decided that meant one of the cleaning staff had shut the window before he came in. He had no evidence that any of what he perceived that night had truly occurred, none but the rather explicit marks Elias had left on him. And the explicit marks left on the desk, but they were nothing to do with Jon, and they were, much like his love bites, completely concealed.</p>
<p>He scratched unconsciously at his high neckline, lost in thought, when the Magnus Institute’s first employee of the week walked in.</p>
<p>It was Tim, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost.</p>
<p>‘Christ, Jon, you’re okay!’</p>
<p>As if through a thick fog, Jon answered, ‘yes, I think so?’</p>
<p>‘Look,’ commanded his computer screen, so he did. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t before. Tim looked anxious, burdened with exhaustion, and he was still devastatingly handsome. Perhaps that’s why he had been so cold to him, Jon thought. A beat passed between them. Tim looked increasingly incredulous and Jon felt like he was missing out on the punchline.</p>
<p>‘Did you <em>get</em> my texts?’ His brow was furrowed, his hair was a mess, and his eyes looked so very heavy. It was early in the morning, but Tim looked drawn and tired in a way Jon knew he didn’t look, even if he was hungover.</p>
<p>‘I did,’ Jon answered, regretting it immediately, ‘but then I got drunk and, I don’t know, I never opened them? I’m not a particularly good texter.’</p>
<p>Tim’s gaze eviscerated him.</p>
<p>‘Sorry. It was the weekend.’</p>
<p>Tim sighed.</p>
<p>‘Was it important?’ Under the table, Jon squirmed. He felt bad. He wished he could just open his phone and look, but he knew that would be wrong and Tim would like that less than his grovelling.</p>
<p>‘We heard something upstairs, from the archive. We didn’t know whether or not you were okay. We were worried! It was loud, and I didn’t know whether you made it home alright or not.’</p>
<p>Jon was taken aback. He’d convinced himself it hadn’t happened at all. He certainly didn’t think Tim cared.</p>
<p>‘I believe there was a break in.’ He said, clipped. Tim’s eyes didn’t leave him. Jon offered more. ‘And a power cut. I think the intruders were taking advantage of the situation? I… stayed for a few hours after I heard the first sound. I hid from the intruders, and they clearly didn't bother me, they mustn't have known I was there. My phone died, I think, and I didn’t look at it. But then Elias fixed the lights and that must have scared them off. Did you leave after that?’</p>
<p>Tim’s expression of bitter, humoured shock had only deepened.</p>
<p>‘I haven’t gone home <em>yet</em>. I left for a coffee across the street. Tim and Sasha haven’t left the archive at all. We’ve all been out of our minds!’</p>
<p>His laughter was a bark. Jon stared, his eyes widening.</p>
<p>‘Are you serious?’</p>
<p>Tim nodded. He was carrying three ice coffees in a drinks holder. Jon shook his head.</p>
<p>‘No, Tim, you’re not allowed to sleep here, that’s not right. I’m sorry you didn’t feel safe, but you’re absolutely not permitted to stay at work overnight. I’m not going to make a big deal out of it, but you absolutely can’t do that again, it’s just an obvious breach of about a hundred codes of conduct-‘</p>
<p>‘What’s that on your desk?’</p>
<p>Jon raised his eyebrows. He didn’t want to look.</p>
<p>‘Don’t change the subject, this is serious, you cannot possibly be telling me you stayed the night there was a break in-‘</p>
<p>‘You keep your desk clear, and now it’s covered in crap. What are you hiding?’</p>
<p>It was a question, but it didn’t sound like it. Jon didn’t tell Tim he meticulously covered that desk in crap specifically to hide something he couldn’t bear to see himself. He only avoided telling Tim the truth because he didn't know it himself.</p>
<p>‘I don’t know what you mean, I’ve always been disorganised. I’ve been meaning to sort this out for days.’ He felt breathless.</p>
<p>Tim rebalanced his weight, drawing himself up to his full height.</p>
<p>‘Go on then. Reorganise.’</p>
<p>Jon hadn’t even signed Tim in, he couldn’t go anywhere, or send Tim anywhere. And he’d just said he was meaning to. He didn’t even know why he was hesitating; he didn’t even know why this was his first conversation with Tim since the interview.</p>
<p>So he started tidying up the piles he’d quietly cultivated in the last half an hour. And underneath was exactly what had been awaiting Jon since 1 AM on Sunday morning, when he’d stumbled out from under his desk into Elias.</p>
<p>The claw marks on the desk.</p>
<p>‘You sly dog!’ Tim laughed, cheerfully. None of the suspicion in his voice evaporated.</p>
<p>‘I have never seen these before in my life.’</p>
<p>It was a lie, but only Tim knew even if it did sound false in Jon’s ears. He flushed.</p>
<p>‘Hm.’ He quirked an eyebrow, and joined Jon behind the desk. He put a hand on top of the five claw marks, for comparison.</p>
<p>He gestured for Jon to put his own hand on top of the other five claw marks on the other side of Jon’s desk chair. He dreaded the truth.</p>
<p>Of course, they didn’t compare.</p>
<p>‘So obviously they’re not human.’</p>
<p>Jon choked, then started to laugh.</p>
<p>‘What the hell do you mean?’</p>
<p>It wasn’t a question.</p>
<p>‘No seriously, compare our hands-‘</p>
<p>Tim seized Jon’s hand at once, and pressed their palms together. There were barely a few millimetres between Jon’s fingertips and Tim’s, but Jon retracted, feeling stung, somehow.</p>
<p>‘Your point?’</p>
<p>‘Our hands are about the same. And those marks are way bigger. A human didn’t make them.’</p>
<p>Jon scoffed.</p>
<p>‘You spend too much time in those archives, Tim. Speaking of, shouldn’t you be getting back to them? Now?’</p>
<p>Tim snorted, and then nodded.</p>
<p>‘Not half as interesting as a real case though. The case of the scratched up desk… very spooky. Unless-‘</p>
<p>Jon signed him in quickly.</p>
<p>‘Seriously though,’ Tim started, as he was leaving. ‘Do you mind if I bring my assistants up to look around? You say it was intruders, but we didn’t hide down there, all night, for nothing. No, we won’t do it again, but really, we heard things up here, and I think it would do them good to get some field research in where I can see them. Would you mind?’</p>
<p>Jon sighed, but he couldn’t recall a single reason why not.</p>
<p>‘Sure,’ he relented, ‘I’m usually free around lunch times.’</p>
<p>Tim flashed him a smile that Jon refused to think about, much like everything Tim had opened his eyes to that morning.</p>
<p>He was ready to sign in the other, more orthodox employees, maybe meet with a particularly early subject, when Rosie walked in. Jon did not hide his falling face.</p>
<p>‘Why are you here?’ He asked in the same voice for blacklisted subjects who kept turning up.</p>
<p>‘I see you’ve perfected the tone, since you’ve started. Glad you have-‘</p>
<p>Jon sighed, openly.</p>
<p>Rosie stopped, appraised Jon and his cluttered desk with the claw marks framing the computer, the desk chair, and Jon himself, naturally. She leaned back and took in the sight.</p>
<p>‘Been talking with the archivists?’</p>
<p>‘It really is none of your business, and I’m asking you to leave.’ He didn’t say it particularly coldly, certainly not vindictively. He said it like it didn’t matter to him. She almost looked proud.</p>
<p>‘I did try not to feed you to the wolves.’</p>
<p>‘That’s lovely, Rosie, really, but I’m asking you to leave for the second time now. If you make me ask you again, I will have to put certain measures into place.’</p>
<p>‘I <em>am </em>here for a reason.’ She smiled, grimly. Jon did not feel heartened.</p>
<p>‘Excellent. In that case, what can I do for you today?’</p>
<p>She cast an eye over the picture Jon made before her, and placed the envelope in her hand on his desk.</p>
<p>‘It’s my statement.’</p>
<p>Truly beginning to feel his patience’s end, Jon cracked a strained smile.</p>
<p>‘You know as well as I do that we don’t accept unsolicited statements, though you’re more than welcome to make a statement at any time. Would you like to step into the office and I can-‘</p>
<p>‘It’s not for the research team. It’s for you.’</p>
<p>Jon looked at her. The weather had been awful, it was true, but she looked more than bedraggled. Her clothes were hanging off her frame, and dripped onto the marble floors, posing a hazard like everything else she said or did. The envelope on Jon’s desk had his name on it.</p>
<p>He frowned at it, and then at her. She didn’t look well at all. Her eyes were puffy, and bloodshot, and her face was uncomfortably swollen.</p>
<p>‘Rosie, would you like to step in anyway? We can think about making a statement or we call you a taxi for the way back.’ He found using that pronoun, we, invested his words with the power of the Institute. It helped subjects understand that Jon was speaking from a certain position. Perhaps it meant nothing to Rosie, who had once occupied that very position. She snorted.</p>
<p>‘Read my statement, it is for you.’</p>
<p>His kindness snapped like a rubber band. He looked at her and deliberately swiped the envelope from his desk into the waiting wastepaper bin.</p>
<p>‘There is a formal process for making statements. I can’t accept this.’</p>
<p>She cracked a toothy smile, and her face seemed to tighten. Jon began to panic.</p>
<p>‘Do you have an EpiPen on hand? Rosie, do you need anything at all at the moment?’</p>
<p>She turned away, slowly dragging her tightening limbs across the floor. Jon was not going to let her leave like that. He caught up to her in a few strides.</p>
<p>‘Rosie! Rosie you’re evidently unwell, do you need anything? Anyone?’</p>
<p>She didn’t answer, merely wheezed and continued on.</p>
<p>‘Jonathon.’</p>
<p>He stopped in his tracks, full attention on her.</p>
<p>‘Look at the employment records. Find out who you work for, and if you’re lucky, if you don’t work for Elias, just leave.’</p>
<p>Jon’s thoughts were lazy butterflies, at once unreachable and slow.</p>
<p>‘Elias is my boss,’ he began, explaining himself to Rosie as if at least one of them was a child.</p>
<p>‘I know he's your boss. But the position’s been outsourced though, so find out who you <em>work</em> for.’ She snapped. He continued to look clueless and judgemental. Taking pity on him, she tried to give him as straight an answer as she could while the pressure built in her head.</p>
<p>‘Jonathon, it’s different here than anywhere else on earth, I hope. There’s analogue records in the bottom draw, they tell you who works for who. I worked for Elias. Not everyone does though. Sure, he's the head, so he's everyone's boss but... oh god, I should never have left. I made a mistake.'</p>
<p>Her breath had become exponentially more laboured as she spoke. Her eyes looked so very, very painful. They were livid with criss-crossing blood vessels, spreading across her sclera like ink bleed. She rubbed them constantly, trying to relieve the pain but only spreading it across her eyes.</p>
<p>‘Those records... use them to note down anything you want to keep a hold of. There’ll be subjects you’ll want to sign in properly, you’ll know when. Records just don’t stick around if they’re on the computer. And burn my statement, it can’t sit in the bin like that.’</p>
<p>Jon nodded, reaching for his phone. He was calling her an ambulance this instance. He spoke to the operator quickly, while Rosie stood in the middle of reception, seeming to take it all in.</p>
<p>‘Rosie,’ she looked over at him, fingers still pawing at her eyes, looking, though Jon hated to admit it, for all the world as if she were trying to relieve a pressure, ‘Rosie, please stay safe. Help is on the way.’</p>
<p>He tried to smile encouragingly, but when she withdrew her hands from her eyes, he saw gore on her fingers. He felt utterly sickened.</p>
<p>He walked over next to her, and sat her down on the floor. He wasn’t sure if she’d pass out, or if she’d try to walk away. Something seemed to have decayed in her as soon as he threw her statement out. Her state was detiorating exponentially, and in a wild leap of logic, Jon asked her a question.</p>
<p>‘Do you need me to read your statement?’</p>
<p>Her laugh was hollow now.</p>
<p>‘Thank you, Jonathon, but no. I was testing you, I wanted to see if you have what it takes.’</p>
<p>Despite himself, he asked. ‘And do I?’</p>
<p>She nodded, hands now covering her eyes. He didn’t look, but he saw gory streams escaping from underneath her palms.</p>
<p>‘You do. Or at least, you should do. You might not make it out of here, but you won’t die. Yet. At least.’ Her voice was hoarse. The ambulance wasn’t here yet.</p>
<p>Martin walked by. Jon recognised him, they spoke daily, extremely briefly, both incredibly shy people hiding under remarkably different veneers. He opened his mouth to speak, but Rosie’s hands were covering her eyes, and Jon knew that for whatever strange reason, she hated the archivists. Jon shook his head almost imperceptibly, and resolved to find him when Tim called at lunch. Jon was looking forward to seeing him, he had much he needed to discuss.</p>
<p>The ambulance came, and they did wheel her away on a stretcher alive. She never did make it out though, and Jon never did discover that. They were not, after all, close.</p>
<p>One ‘wet floor’ sign later, and Jon was alarmed by how easily he put the incident out of his mind. It was easy enough for him to forget what he saw, and it seemed the more he had to forget about, the easier it was to let go of each strange incident. He jumped when he saw the claw marks on the desk again, once he’d seen Rosie into the ambulance. He signed the staff in, repeating the process in the same kind of mindless fugue as Rosie had shuffled away. He didn’t like the comparison, and it sat with him in the very back of his mind. Martin came back from upstairs, and he waved. Jon blanked for a minute. Then he smiled politely.</p>
<p>‘Hello Martin, what can I do for you?’</p>
<p>Looking at the man in front of him, it was difficult to see why he looked so shy. His shoulders were hunched, he shifted his weight from side to side, and crossed his arms; his body language could not be more closed. Yet, he was handsome. His clothes were nice, well chosen; he wore pastel jumpers and smart slacks and the same shiny black dress shoes every day. His hair was always neat but never cut severely short, he had pretty brown eyes when he did look up from the floor, and above all else he looked gentle. Kind.</p>
<p>If Jon looked like that, he wouldn’t waste his time hiding behind himself, he thought.</p>
<p>‘Oh I, I just came back to, uh, sign in? I know we’re meant to, but when-‘</p>
<p>Jon nodded.</p>
<p>‘That’s great actually, I’d forgotten about that.’ He meant he’d forgotten to sign Martin in, once he’d disappeared down into the archives.</p>
<p>‘Do you know what happened to her?’ He asked, half expectantly and half nervously. Jon sighed.</p>
<p>‘No, I don’t. I don’t know anything about her, except that she was very, very strange to me, and she was extremely strange about everyone else she ever mentioned. Of all the things she told me to watch out for, or keep an eye on, or just avoid at all costs, she didn’t mention… eye infections? Funnily enough. So no, not a clue.’</p>
<p>‘An eye infection?’ He sounded incredulous. He drummed his fingers against the half empty cup of ice coffee Tim had brought the archivists. Jon narrowed his eyes.</p>
<p>‘Actually, I’m glad you came back-‘ the fleeting moment of joy on Martin’s face was quickly undercut by the realisation of Jon’s tone. ‘I told Tim I’m not going to make a big deal about it, but I wanted to talk to you, and Sasha, individually about this.’</p>
<p>Martin looked like he was bracing himself on Jon’s desk.</p>
<p>‘You can’t stay in the Institute all night. I know we don’t turn people out at closing time, I know that most of the staff think the fire escape is just the back door, so I’m not exactly surprised that staff do stay overnight, but it’s a clear breach of about a dozen protocols, and I absolutely have to caution you all about it. Okay?’</p>
<p>Martin nodded. And then, he suddenly possessed himself. He met Jon’s eye and took a deep breath.</p>
<p>‘I wanted to talk to you about that night, too, actually.’</p>
<p>Jon quirked an eyebrow. Martin sounded so certain and assured.</p>
<p>‘Please, ask away.’</p>
<p>Martin drummed his fingers on the desk, drawing attention to the five marks dragged through the wooden surface, pointing at Jon. He flinched, as if it were the first time he’d seen them.</p>
<p>‘So at closing time, on Saturday night, we were actually getting ready to leave. But then there was a power cut, and  we heard noises upstairs, on the ground floor. In reception.’</p>
<p>Jon’s brow furrowed.</p>
<p>‘Well, there was a break in.’</p>
<p>Martin’s eyes flashed. ‘So what got stolen?’</p>
<p>Jon’s stony silence answered him.</p>
<p>‘Any signs of a break in? Any disruption?’</p>
<p>Jon shook his head. ‘What are you suggesting, then?’</p>
<p>Martin sighed, and whatever courage possessed him left him just as easily.</p>
<p>‘God, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think you had a supernatural encounter, here, in the Institute.’</p>
<p>Jon scoffed, openly.</p>
<p>‘No, Martin, this is all some kind of practical joke. And I’m not going to rise to it, so please, if the rest of the archival staff are going to tell me the same thing, just pass on the message that I’ll decline that investigation.’</p>
<p>‘What? No! You don’t even know what made those marks? Don’t they bother you at all?’</p>
<p>Jon looked through him with that gaze he unleashed on the passionate subjects who were determined to convince Jon of what they saw. It was a farce. The thought that something had made those marks that night was ridiculous. It was far more sensible to believe they were always there, under the paperwork, and it was some kind of practical joke or irony.</p>
<p>‘Honestly? No. It’s fine. I… don’t really care.’</p>
<p>Martin’s expression was a mirror of Jon’s, confused disappointment and thinly veiled judgement plain on both their faces.</p>
<p>‘Alright. But we’ll be up later though.’</p>
<p>He seemed to disappear before Jon could say anything more. Still looking at the screen, he slid the papers still littering the desk back over those marks.</p>
<p>And lunch time rolled around without incident. Even the subjects seemed uncharacteristically cheerful, a few were gleefully playing a joke, others were unperturbed by their experiences and were only making a statement on the recommendation of a friend, one rather standout subject didn’t actually have a statement but simply wanted the attention of a certain researcher. Jon threw him out in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>‘Oh, I’m sure there was no harm in it,’ giggled the researcher, when Jon had phoned the department to let him know.</p>
<p>‘I’m sure,’ he said carefully, ‘but I just wanted to let you know. You can’t be too careful.’</p>
<p>He heard a visible eye roll in the voice down the phone.</p>
<p>‘You know, sometimes people don’t have sinister ulterior motives? Maybe he just thought I was cute.’</p>
<p>Jon pursed his lips.</p>
<p>‘Just as long as you’re aware of your… admirer.’</p>
<p>He was about to put the phone down when he heard from the receiver-</p>
<p>‘Tim, is he gay or homophobic, I just can’t tell- oh shit.’</p>
<p>Jon looked at the receiver in his hand, totally stunned.</p>
<p>‘Oh dear God,’ he muttered.</p>
<p>He decided to sneak to the café on his lunch break in the hopes that the archival staff would try to find him just as he was away from his desk. They were the last people on Earth he wanted to see.</p>
<p>However, a pressing email came through on his phone, and he knew he’d have to return to the front desk to attach the files Elias was demanding. These emails were the only communication they’d had, but there’d been plenty of them. Rosie was right about one thing, Elias couldn’t manage a square inch of his own desk, never mind the whole Institute. It seemed reasonable that admin had been outsourced. He vowed to look up Solum, the company he actually had the contract with. It was still hard to remember that he didn't actually work for the Institute when he put so much into keeping it running.</p>
<p>He was returning with a wrap and a tea when he spotted the three of them in reception. Sasha was at his computer, looking with an unconcealed fascination, Martin had brought a magnifying glass and he was pawing over every inch of the claw marks, concealing paperwork strewn about the floor, while Tim recorded his observations into a tape recorder.</p>
<p>Jon considered just walking away and letting them carry on.</p>
<p>It was Sasha who spotted him though, and she waved him over. Her smile was disarming, and Jon’s shoulders sank. He wasn’t getting away now.</p>
<p>‘Jon, Jon! How do you explain this?’ She asked, gesturing to the screen in front of her. His face was unreadable, but the three archivists sensed his unease.</p>
<p>‘Using the front desk for off the clock purposes? Has Sasha found your, what, micromanagement fetish porn?’ Tim joked, and Sasha slapped his wrist.</p>
<p>‘Hey!’</p>
<p>‘I’m not even organised, never mind a-’ Jon huffed, folding his arms.</p>
<p>‘It’s much worse than that, anyway. Why is this your background?’ Her voice was full of humour, but Tim and Martin eagerly gathered around to look.</p>
<p>‘Oh what, that is weird.’ Martin said, bemused.</p>
<p>Jon stayed where he was, self-conscious and defensive as usual around groups of friends.</p>
<p>‘I don’t know, it’s always been that. And I don’t know how to change it.’</p>
<p>‘Losing your patience with our investigation?’ Tim smirked. It was as if he knew he was being annoying.</p>
<p>‘Not at all.’ Jon deadpanned.</p>
<p>‘Great! We’ll probably be taking notes for a little while yet!’ Sasha’s voice was so bright, and so cheerful, that Jon just didn’t have it in him to tell them all to get lost.</p>
<p>‘Fine. Just as long as I can use my desk.’</p>
<p>She cleared out of his seat, and Jon closed all the programmes she’d been rifling through. Then he closed all the web pages she’d opened too. She’d been aggressively guessing his Facebook password. Jon smiled. Even if she had managed it, there wouldn’t have been anything worth finding. He’d only just been pressured to make one when he joined the Institute. Even the emails from Elias were depressingly above board.</p>
<p>Gave no indication of what happened between them.</p>
<p>Tim walked around to the front of his desk, pinching his chin between his finger and thumb, the very picture of concentration. Jon glared. Tim was one of those people who was so handsome, it was difficult to see why he wasn’t modelling. The tape recorder in his other hand was still running.</p>
<p>‘So what the hell made those marks?’ He muttered to himself.</p>
<p>Tim’s gaze skewered Jon for a moment, then he smirked slightly. Jon raised an eyebrow.</p>
<p>‘Would you stand up and put your hands on the desk for me?’</p>
<p>With an unamused expression, Jon did as he was asked, placing his palms flat on the desk. His little finger barely graced the inner most claw mark.</p>
<p>Tim stared. Unknown to Jon, his turtleneck had slipped a little. Between the livid marks on Jon’s neck, and the five deep scratch marks crowding Jon’s frame, Tim was staring at a rather interesting image. He was lucky he wasn’t prone to blushing.</p>
<p>‘Well whatever it was, it was either a hell of a lot taller than you, it had far broader shoulders, or perhaps both…’</p>
<p>Jon was about to at least pretend to go back to work, when Tim asked for a favour.</p>
<p>‘What now?’</p>
<p>‘I want you to try scratching the desk.’</p>
<p>‘Why?’</p>
<p>‘Want to know if you were fucking the monster and that’s why you’re being so cagey.’</p>
<p>Instinctively, Jon balled his hands into fists, sure enough leaving his own scratch marks on the desk.</p>
<p>‘Oh fuck off, Tim!’ Jon groaned, while Tim broke down laughing.</p>
<p>‘Oh my god the look on your face. Well anyway, we can definitely rule out these scratch marks being yours.’</p>
<p>They ascertained how much lighter the human marks Jon left were compared to the deep trenches ruining the desk’s surface, totally ruling out any human influence on the desk altogether. They were quietly speculating and theorising among themselves, drawing ever more radical conclusions. To Jon, it sounded thoroughly fictitious, but there was one element of their conversation that interested Jon.</p>
<p>‘Why are you using a tape recorder? Is there a certain look you lot in the archives have to maintain?’</p>
<p>Tim laughed, ‘yeah, it’s all for the aesthetic.’</p>
<p>Jon blinked. ‘Really?’</p>
<p>‘No,’ said Martin. ‘The truth is, we’ve tried recording a couple of statements on our laptops, but if there’s any truth in them, then they won’t… exactly record? We’ve tried recording this one on all our laptops, before we, before we began the investigation, but the file just keeps getting corrupted. Which is exciting, because that suggests there’s something worth revisiting here! So we have to make sure we actually record this, and the tapes are way more reliable.’</p>
<p>Jon stared, openly judgemental. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’</p>
<p>‘You need to hear some stupider things then!’ Tim said lightly.</p>
<p>‘Maybe you should take a statement!’ Sasha added.</p>
<p>Rosie’s statement sitting in the bin flashed through his mind. How had he forgotten about that? The thought of even touching it made him sick.</p>
<p>‘Speaking of, I have something for you. I think it would be for the best if it was disposed of, but it may be of some interest to you.’</p>
<p>Three pairs of eyes turned their attention to Jon in perfect synchrony. Jon looked at the wall between Martin and Sasha, it was less overwhelming.</p>
<p>‘Oh really?’ Tim sounded delighted.</p>
<p>‘Yeah. Here it is.’</p>
<p>He stood up, picked up the bin, and thrust the whole wastepaper bin into Tim’s hands.</p>
<p>‘There’s a statement in there, from Rosie. Her eyes exploded today, I think, so I wouldn’t touch it, if I were you. There might be…  residue on the envelope. Then again, that’s your prerogative.’ He shrugged his shoulders noncommittally, and the delighted silence that met him left him more confused than ever.</p>
<p>Tim snorted.</p>
<p>‘I don’t usually deal with the rubbish, but I guess I’ll make an exception, only for you though!’</p>
<p>‘Aw Jesus Christ give the man a break Tim!’</p>
<p>Jon wondered whether Sasha ever stopped smiling, or whether she just liked Tim that much. Personally, he couldn’t see why anyone would.</p>
<p>Martin, meanwhile, looked harrowed by the reminder of what he saw that morning.</p>
<p>‘Was she okay, afterwards?’ He asked, tentatively.</p>
<p>‘Wait, what? Rosie’s eyes actually exploded?’ Sasha’s face finally fell.</p>
<p>‘And we had to hear that from Jon?’</p>
<p>‘Tim!’</p>
<p>‘Well, the ambulance came, and I’m sure they’re taking good care of her. We could all send her a card?’ Jon’s voice was stiff. He didn’t like Rosie, but her circumstances were obviously deserving of the condolences her ex co-workers could offer her.</p>
<p>‘Now that is a lovely idea! Glad someone around here still has a heart!’ Sasha was leading them all back down to the archives, at last.</p>
<p>‘I have a heart! That just took me somewhat off-guard! Who would have thought, you know?’</p>
<p>Martin quietly followed behind them, offering an awkward wave at Jon before turning away in mortification and hurrying down the stairs.</p>
<p>‘Guys, do you think he was telling the truth?’</p>
<p>It was remarkable how their voices carried when the space was empty. The halls of the Institute seemed designed for sound to carry.</p>
<p>‘Absolutely. Christ, he has no idea.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Dealing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>cw violence</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘So I have a lead on the mystery of the desk,’ said Sasha.</p>
<p>She was walking in with Tim, and Jon had begun to embrace a few of the stereotypes that came with the role. He was reading a magazine, Psychology Today, and he’d plucked up the courage to wear his half-moon glasses with the golden glasses chain. No one had commented on them, and he was beginning to contemplate wearing the rest of his wardrobe into work. That took some courage though.</p>
<p>‘Oh really?’ Tim responded, interested.</p>
<p>‘Mm. Met someone calling himself Michael today. He’d likely be the culprit of such a crime. I think I need to make a statement later, are you free?’</p>
<p>Jon didn’t like the sound of that, he didn’t even know a Michael.</p>
<p>‘Michael… well that certainly doesn’t rule out my better theories. But yeah, I’ll be free later.’</p>
<p>‘Mm, I definitely think it does rule out your pervert imaginings, besides, we have way more to deal with right now. Can’t wait for Martin to come in and help.’</p>
<p>Looking over the top of his magazine, Jon narrowed his eyes in frustration. They were speaking as though Martin was late, when they were coming into work well before opening time. It was as if they expected him to simply live down in the archives, and Jon wasn’t having that.</p>
<p>‘Ah, he texted me last night. Apparently he has a stomach bug? Don’t think he’ll be coming in.’</p>
<p>‘Oh fuck, are you serious? That’s bad. That’s really bad, we’ve got to get started, now.’</p>
<p>Sasha sounded disproportionately distressed. Tim put an arm around her shoulder.</p>
<p>Tim explained to Jon that Martin wouldn’t be coming in today, as if he hadn’t blatantly eavesdropped as they chatted in the hallway before opening. Unlike usual, they dropped their typical attempts to draw Jon into a conversation, they seemed hot on the pursuit of… the old statements they were tasked with filing.</p>
<p>Jon flicked a page and wondered how hard their jobs could possibly be. His own was getting a lot easier. Elias bothered him less, and the meetings were becoming regular. Consistent, constant meetings with a certain Peter Lukas, one of the benefactors, Jon gathered. Somehow, despite being the same time and almost daily, Elias insisted on Jon organising these meetings.</p>
<p>For the next week though, the archivists at least acted as though their jobs were very, very hard indeed. Perhaps they were missing whatever contributions Martin made, but Jon didn’t see Tim without the tape in his hand, even when he was sitting in the café at lunch. He was rarely without Sasha, either, and they were both constantly pointing at papers, comparing notes, or listening to tapes out loud. They were very disturbing tapes, too. The bits and pieces that did reach Jon were often disorientating.</p>
<p>‘-she saw a woman lying face down on the pavement. This woman wore a long red dress and Harriet said she could see it shifting in the orange glow of the streetlamps, as though something was moving underneath it.’</p>
<p>The hair on the back of Jon’s neck stood on end, and Tim caught him looking over in horror. He glared and switched the tape off. Jon shrugged. It was Tim’s decision to play his tapes out loud.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, he bumped into Sasha in the café.</p>
<p>‘-It is not a god. Or if it is then it is a dead god, decayed and clammy corpse-flesh brimming with writhing graveworms-’</p>
<p>That caught his attention. Sasha, in a miserable trance, repeated it again a few times before she saw Jon looking at her and switched it off. She didn’t offer him a smile.</p>
<p>It may be Tim’s voice coming from the tape, but the words seemed as alien to her as they did to Jon, if her expression was anything to go by.</p>
<p>Jon left the café without purchasing anything.</p>
<p>On Thursday, he collided full body into Tim, who was staring intently at the tape player and paying no attention to his surroundings.</p>
<p>‘Sorry,’ offered Jon.</p>
<p>He scowled at Jon, and occupied the nearest seat. That was in reception, and Jon thought he understood how Tim kept working there. From his own seat behind the front desk, Jon could hear Tim’s tape playing Sasha’s voice.</p>
<p>‘-the ‘flesh-hive’, Michael had called it, and the silver things formed clustered knots where his eyes used to be,’</p>
<p>Tim buried his head in his hands, replaying Sasha’s statement several times over, before comparing it to another.</p>
<p>‘-The flowing tide that swarmed and scuttled as soon as the door opened. The smell that rolled out of that apartment like a choking wall. The thing that embraced Benoît.’</p>
<p>‘-found myself standing over the mass of pitted and hollow skin that was once a man. He shuddered violently as the gas engulfed him, and then lay still.’</p>
<p>‘-You should have burned the place to the ground.’</p>
<p>‘-gas engulfed him, and then lay still.’</p>
<p>Tim alternated between the two tapes, skipping to the same places again and again. Increasingly frustrated, about to tell Tim that he was disturbing him, Jon walked over. He would do anything to simply distract Tim from those awful tapes.</p>
<p>Tim didn’t notice his approach, instead he was scribbling in the notepad on his knees while the tape played beside him. Jon peered over into it, his curiosity sufficiently stirred.</p>
<p>DEAD?!???! WORSE?!?!!!?</p>
<p>The latter was circled several times over, and Tim was chewing the tip of his pen like he was mulling over a particularly difficult equation. Then he underlined the word, stood up, and left.</p>
<p>This is when Jon realised he hadn’t seen Martin in days. He was ashamed to realise that he had assumed Martin had just become a recluse in the archives, unlike Sasha and Tim who signed in at least every morning, and wandered the Institute restlessly, searching always. Though, he never did see them leave. He sighed.</p>
<p>He couldn’t worry like this.</p>
<p>The days passed without Martin, and Jon was worried quite despite himself. He maintained his best appearances, continued reading through his favourite magazines and reassured himself of the immutable truths of this world, and chatted to the staff in research and the library. He was glad of them; whatever strange story they had for him, they were always just that.</p>
<p>Nothing about the things they said to him made dread crawl down his skin like a rash.</p>
<p>He started to resent the sight of Tim and Sasha. Despite looking as though they hadn’t slept for days, they were always neat, tidy, and well presented. Sasha wore skirts and jumpers, Tim wore shirts and tight jeans, and they both somehow looked as though they’d just been dug up, despite a hair never being out of place.</p>
<p>And Martin was no-where to be seen.</p>
<p>When Jon was locking up on Saturday night, that was when he saw Martin again.</p>
<p>The building closed to the public an hour before the building was shut for the night. The specific reason was so that subjects couldn’t quickly ask a researcher about something as they were leaving. It promoted the established way of collecting statements, and kept the boundary between research and conversation nice and clear.</p>
<p>So when Jon heard a thumping on the door, he said with his practiced hostility;</p>
<p>‘We are closed.’</p>
<p>‘Open the door, Jon.’</p>
<p>Jon dropped the box of blank forms.</p>
<p>‘Martin?’</p>
<p>‘Yeah, it’s me, please let me in.’</p>
<p>Jon shivered, and fell back on protocol.</p>
<p>‘I can’t do that, the building’s closed at the moment and staff are meant to be leaving.’</p>
<p>There was a desperate laugh outside the door, and one, single thump. The hinges shook slightly. Jon pictured Martin, and he remembered a relatively short man whose hunched shoulders were dwarfed by pastel coloured cardigans. It was hard to reconcile him with that kind of power.</p>
<p>‘Jon, please, this is important! I have to talk to Tim and Sasha and I know they’re in there.’</p>
<p>He squeaked, but Jon backed away from the door. With a resounding crash it shook once again. The sound echoed through those marble halls.</p>
<p>‘Jon!’</p>
<p>He sounded choked up, like he was about to cry, or like he was in pain. Jon couldn’t leave him out there. But he was afraid. The slam on the door was almighty, and Jon knew that if he didn’t open that door, he would just be what stood in Martin’s way.</p>
<p>‘Fuck it.’ The keys to the Institute found themselves gripped tight between Jon’s knuckles, and he took the door off the latch. He sprang back as Martin tumbled in. Jon let him drop to the floor.</p>
<p>They both froze where they were, Jon against the door, ready to bolt at the first sign of violence, Martin on the floor, moving only to breathe, both palms flat against the cool marble.</p>
<p>The tension did not diffuse. It sat in the wide space between them and pressured them.</p>
<p>Slowly, carefully, Martin looked up from the floor up to Jon.</p>
<p>‘What’s got into you?’ He asked.</p>
<p>Jon barked a laugh.</p>
<p>‘Into me? Really?’</p>
<p>Martin’s brows furrowed.</p>
<p>‘What’s wrong?’ He asked.</p>
<p>‘You! Look at you! What do you think you’re doing? You can’t, you can’t break into work! At this time of night! After you’ve been missing for a week, and, look at you! Martin go home, you look like hell!’</p>
<p>Jon sounded exasperated, and angry, and he didn’t look afraid. The keys were a promise glinting between Jon’s knuckles. Yet when Martin looked at Jon, he knew he was afraid.</p>
<p>Martin cocked his head.</p>
<p>‘Are you… seriously, are you scared of me?’</p>
<p>The question left Jon breathless. Jon was sure it was rhetorical, meant to disarm the situation, remind him nothing bad could happen, never mind the worst.</p>
<p>‘Yes? I think that’s understandable, given the circumstances?’</p>
<p>Martin waited for Jon to elaborate, and it was as if he couldn’t help himself.</p>
<p>‘You could hurt me! You’re strong, it wouldn’t be difficult, exactly. I don’t understand why you’re here. You should go.’</p>
<p>He still didn’t look scared. He looked confused, and mortified, but Martin <em>knew</em>. He stopped shaking, and his skin returned to its normal shade. His breathing evened out, and he looked so ashamed. He also looked better.</p>
<p>Slowly, he picked himself up off the floor, and hung his head.</p>
<p>‘I’m sorry Jon, its.. it’s been a hell of a week. I really need to see Sasha and Tim, but I shouldn’t have been so…’</p>
<p>‘Alarming? Intimidating?’</p>
<p>Martin hummed a noise of agreement.</p>
<p>‘Did you know that anti-social behaviour can be grounds for arrest?’</p>
<p>Martin laughed, because he knew Jon was joking. He wasn’t smiling, his expression was set, but there was a smile in his voice.</p>
<p>‘No, really, I thought you were coming to kill me!’</p>
<p>There was humour there, that was undeniable. As was the truth that Jon had been terrified. The residual fear clung to his words.</p>
<p>‘You specifically?’</p>
<p>Jon laughed.</p>
<p>‘Why not? I said your tapes were stupid.’</p>
<p>‘Most of them <em>are </em>stupid, so that’s fair.’</p>
<p>The hysteria was finally bleeding out of the room, absorbed by Martin and his gentle sense of humour and all his soft smiles. As if he was made to absorb all the anxiety a room could hold.</p>
<p>‘You wanted to see Tim and Sasha?’</p>
<p>Martin nodded. He felt so tired again, now that Jon had put the keys back on his belt loop, and no one was on edge.</p>
<p>‘Yeah, they haven’t left, by any chance? Have they?’</p>
<p>Jon laughed sardonically.</p>
<p>‘God no, they’re workaholics. The three of you are. One day you might consider leaving on time?’</p>
<p>Martin smiled.</p>
<p>‘Maybe someday.’</p>
<p>And now that Jon knew he had no way to stop him at all, Martin slipped away into the archives.</p>
<p>Martin wasn’t entirely sure he knew how the rest of his team would accept his statement. He thought they might take some convincing. Perhaps he’d need to prove what had happened, perhaps he never could. He’d gotten to a point in their friendship where he expected they’d be glad to see him, or at least gladder to see him than to never hear from him again.</p>
<p>‘Sit down. Don’t move.’</p>
<p>He hadn’t expected that. Sasha and Tim were staring at him with wide eyes full of open mistrust. He hadn’t said anything yet. They each brandished fire extinguishers. He wasn’t planning on combusting.</p>
<p>‘Guys?’</p>
<p>Behind him, a door creaked open. He knew there were doors behind him, the archives were a labyrinth to the uninitiated. But he sure there wasn't a door right behind him, inches away from the back of his head. There sure hadn’t been one when Tim had pointed out a chair in the middle of the room and ordered him to sit.</p>
<p>The air pressure changed behind him, and his ears popped. Martin had never been on a plane, so the sensation was particularly alien. His whole body tensed, but on Tim and Sasha’s warning looks, he willed himself to stay in place.</p>
<p>‘What’s going on?’</p>
<p>‘You tell us.’ Sasha sounded grave. This didn’t sound like a menial thing, a simple dispute about missing statements or last biscuits from the pack. Martin’s head swam.</p>
<p>‘What?’</p>
<p>‘Where were you?’ That was Tim. His voice was something he could hold onto, something solid.</p>
<p>‘I was, I came back to tell you, you don’t need to-‘</p>
<p>‘Where were you?’ Sasha asked this time. The weight of two pairs of eyes was heavy, but not as heavy as knowing there were a third, maybe even a fourth, just out of sight. Maybe more.</p>
<p>‘I was in my flat. It was, I investigated… Do you remember Vittery?’</p>
<p>They nodded. Of course they remembered Vittery. He recounted his break in, and didn’t find even a flicker of excitement. That was strange. He knew they thought he was timid, and he knew they wouldn’t have expected him to break into a basement twice. They didn’t even question it. So Martin filled the crackling silence with his story, and he didn’t turn around to look at whatever was behind him, at whatever Sasha kept looking at. Their faces hardened at his description of the worms in the basement, and they nodded gravely when he told them about the mouldering, corpselike woman he discovered there.</p>
<p>They already knew. While his room was under siege, they’d been learning. It should have been more reassuring than it felt.</p>
<p>When he told them that the remains of Prentiss had woken him up by crawling under his door, Sasha and Tim exchanged glances.</p>
<p>‘So, um, so, when I got home, I couldn’t bring myself to stay awake long enough to send an email, so I just collapsed, fully clothed onto the bed.</p>
<p>I don’t know how long I slept for, but it was still dark when the knocking woke me up. I don’t know if it was the same night, or if I’d slept right through the day. Either way, I dragged myself up and, as I sat there, it all came back to me, what I’d seen, and I shuddered. I tried to tell myself I’d imagined it. Maybe I’d overreacted to finding a homeless woman sleeping in the basement. Maybe she was sick and needed an ambulance. Oh god, maybe I’d left her to die.’</p>
<p>‘If only,’ Tim broke in, sounding more severe than he ever had in his life.</p>
<p>Martin offered him a bitter smile. He shared the sentiment.</p>
<p>‘There was more knocking, and I reached up to flick the light on. But when I did so nothing happened. I tried the lamp next to my bed, but again, nothing. Looking around I saw that none of my electronics seemed to be on. There must have been some sort of power cut. Again, someone knocked at the door. Maybe it was one of my neighbours… coming to check whether I’d lost power? So I shuffle over towards the door and… reached for the handle.</p>
<p>As I was about to open it I got a sudden chill and stopped. What if she was outside, waiting? I mean th-the worms that made a hive of her body, eager, striving to make me one as well.’</p>
<p>The look Sasha gave him was openly suspicious, and Martin squirmed in the high backed wooden chair.</p>
<p>‘I thought of that awful case you had us looking into where that woman… burst into worms, and I realised that this woman must be that Jane Prentiss we were talking about. I never had one of those peepholes added, so I couldn’t see what was out there, but as I took a step back I saw something on the floor, crawling out from underneath the door. It was a small, silver-looking worm.’</p>
<p>He took a shuddering breath, and received no sympathy in the analytical stare of his friends.</p>
<p>‘I think I might have… lost my mind a bit, then. It all… feels very… strange, blurry. I-I remember stamping and stamping as-as more made their way under my doorway. I-I remember grabbing every towel, sock, bit of fabric scrap that I could find, stuffing them under the door, into the cracks around the window. Anything where a slender worm might crawl I made airtight. And then I sat there and waited. I-I still had no power, no phone, no way to communicate with the outside.’</p>
<p>Tim nodded, remembering that Martin had texted during the period he claimed to have no way of getting in contact. Jane Prentiss had used Martin’s phone specifically to deceive them.</p>
<p>‘This went on for six days.’</p>
<p>Sasha raised her eyebrows, the only indication of surprise Martin had seen in either of them so far. They were positioned in the room so that Martin could only see one of them head on, and the other through his periphery vision. He knew there was something behind him.</p>
<p>‘Every time I thought it might be safe to try and leave I’d hear that knocking at my door come back.’</p>
<p>‘So… did she leave?’ Asked Tim.</p>
<p>‘I’m sorry?'</p>
<p>‘How did you escape?’</p>
<p>‘Well… tonight I couldn’t take it anymore. No internet, no phone, no power. I read the handful of print books I own several times. I-I didn’t really sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I’d start to feel something was crawling… up my legs and I’d have to sit up and check. So, so it was all a bit of a blur, really, but I just remember feeling so tired, and so… angry, which I think is fair. So I wrapped my nose and mouth up in a scarf, put my gloves on, and… well when she knocked the door, I threw it open as hard as I could. I figured she wasn’t exactly physically strong, or particularly healthy, so I thought it would stun her.  And I think I knocked her out cold. Took her by surprise, I guess. And then I ran. I literally ran all the way from Stockwell to Chelsea. Every time I stopped I just felt sick, or worse, like my skin was crawling, and I just kept going until I got here. I… I had to tell you.’</p>
<p>He paused, and then, confessionally, he added, ‘the whole time, all I could think about was… statements. So, I guess I needed to make a statement.’</p>
<p>‘Did you come into contact with Prentiss?’</p>
<p>‘Not… physically? I didn’t touch her at all, if that’s what you mean?’</p>
<p>Tim nodded. He paced, tapping his chin with his thumb. He stopped in the middle of the room, and looked behind Martin. His direction of sight landed on something that would be very, very tall indeed. Martin bit his lip. Tim and Sasha looked at each other again, and nodded.</p>
<p>‘Martin, some pretty weird shit’s happened to us too,’ said Tim.</p>
<p>Martin raised his eyebrows. ‘Um, noted.’</p>
<p>‘After you went missing, I met someone.’</p>
<p>‘Good for you?’</p>
<p>If she wasn’t worried about infestations, Sasha would have liked to shake Martin.</p>
<p>‘This is serious. He’s some kind of entity, and he showed me Timothy Hodges body. He wasn’t… he was still <em>alive</em> when we found him. He was completely incapacitated by worms, just like what you saw with Prentiss.’</p>
<p>Martin nodded. Words were hard to follow. He hadn’t slept in a week. He felt dreadful.</p>
<p>‘This… entity calls himself Michael. He saved my life, he told me a lot about… the flesh-hive, and he mentioned us all by name. He said he wants to save your life.’</p>
<p>‘Sorry, <em>my</em> life? Specifically?’</p>
<p>‘And Tim’s, and mine.’</p>
<p>Martin breathed out. He finally willed himself to turn around and look.</p>
<p>He did not see what he’d expected to. Perhaps Prentiss had shaped his vision of the supernatural, and he’d been expecting rot, decay, and worms. Instead, he saw an ordinary man. Tall, blonde, and smiling. He even looked friendly.</p>
<p>He leaned against a yellow door that simply didn’t connect to a room, at least, not one Martin knew of.</p>
<p>‘And how…’ Martin began, his voice sounding distant even in his own ears, ‘is Michael going to achieve that, exactly?’</p>
<p>‘Please don’t freak out,’ Tim’s voice sounded human for the first time since Martin walked in.Martin steeled himself.</p>
<p>Without a word, Michael’s hands sharpened into inches long, thin points. He waved them.</p>
<p>‘Oh my God.’</p>
<p>‘It’s really not that bad!’ Sasha began. ‘Like, it’s not fun, but! He saved my life!’</p>
<p>Martin whipped around to look at her.</p>
<p>‘Um? No? Can we not? Is there, is there literally any other way of doing this?’</p>
<p>‘Michael? Do we have to?’</p>
<p>‘No, not really. But then, you don’t <em>have </em>to live, do you?’</p>
<p>His voice alone set Martin’s teeth on edge, and he involuntarily closed his eyes as the world tilted a little.</p>
<p>Without warning, after lazily watching the dispute between the new archivists, Michael reached between Martin’s shoulder blades, cutting through the skin like paper. Being stabbed in the back must hurt, and Martin screamed. But sure enough, Michael pulled out a squirming worm, rolling it between his forefinger and thumb, eviscerating the creature on the sharpest points.</p>
<p>‘I- I swear I didn’t know-‘</p>
<p>Sasha nodded, sagely, ‘it’s okay, I didn’t either.’</p>
<p>But Michael wasn’t done. There were more worms, and there was so much more to do.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Believing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For the most part, Jon Sims was an unobtrusive man. There was little he hated more than intrusion, so he tended to do his very best to treat others as he wished to be treated, and stay out of their business. But he was also kind, and brave, so when he heard screaming and pleading in the archives there was no doubt in his mind about intervening.</p><p>He ran down the stairs to the archives for the first time in his life, that night, phone in hand, 999 dialled, ready to do what it took to de-escalate whatever situation he may find behind that thin, poorly fitted door. He hesitated for just a moment though, before throwing the door open. He wanted to get a read on the situation he was about to put to an end. And in that precise moment, Michael laughed. It was a hysterical, desperate cry, one that shook the Archivists as they pleaded with him to stop now there were no more worms.</p><p>The words made little sense to Jon, and that unearthly sound left him unable to locate his hand in relationship to the door’s handle. He tripped on the bottom stair as he stepped back. He couldn’t get up. There was screaming behind the door in front of him, but none of those directions made sense anymore. His sense of perspective was totally and utterly distorted.</p><p>‘You said you wanted to <em>help!</em>’</p><p>‘I am the very throat of delusion, Archivist, and you don’t understand what’s really going on here if you don’t understand that. Still, I shan’t be the one to expose you to those mysteries, if you haven’t yet come across them.‘</p><p>‘You’re <em>killing </em>him! Stop!’</p><p>‘What do you want, Michael?’</p><p>Jon tried to blink away the disorientation, but every movement just drew the confusion deeper into himself. He knew that name. He knew that he knew that name, but it connected with nothing. Nothing he understood. Nothing at all.</p><p>‘I don’t want anything, I am an impulse, an action carried out-‘</p><p>‘Then stop it, if you don’t want to- just, stop!’</p><p>When Michael laughed again, long and pitying, Jon lost consciousness. His crumpled body lay there, collapsed on the stairs just a level below the Institute.</p><p>‘Aw, you’ll understand, one day, if you walk this path. Though, perhaps there is an opportunity here. I’ll leave your<em> friend</em> be, if you can offer me something… better.’</p><p>Tim tried to pick through any information he knew about Michael. Since Sasha had met him, Tim had found rather a lot of statements about delusion. There’d been much to learn about the insects and their infestation, and then there was this. He knew about delusion, about endless corridors and the things that weren’t what they seemed, but he’d always discarded them not as false, but as irrelevant.</p><p>He was drawing a blank. He didn’t know what Michael meant.</p><p>‘Whatever you want. Just, drop him.’ Sasha’s voice was commanding.</p><p>Michael released Martin from his grip, whose own hands immediately sprang to his bleeding neck and cheek, trying to staunch the blood. He only had two hands though, and the blood dripped from all the other wounds. He was too numb to cry, but his ragged breathing filled the silence as Michael contemplated his many, many options.</p><p>‘What a position to find myself… what could I possibly want here? There are plenty of doors, I suppose, a steady stream of subjects and staff and if memory serves me, I believe few would be immune to my influence. No, this could be a mutually beneficial arrangement… in exchange for your friend, I simply ask, when you see me or my door, point someone my way.’</p><p>Tim was about to protest, and it looked like Sasha was too, when Michael deliberately placed a long, clawed, broken hand on Martin’s shoulder. He went rigid, but he set his jaw.</p><p>‘We don’t have to go along with this.’ Martin said. He meant it.</p><p>But when Tim and Sasha made their deal with Michael, Martin couldn’t deny he was glad.</p><p>Michael left through that yellow door, and before they tried to comprehend just what they’d agreed to, they celebrated. It was the hysterical kind of joy born from true fear, with hugs and tears, and apologies and real forgiveness. Tim passed around ciders he’d started keeping in the minifridge since they started making progress with the statements, and they drank to survival for the first time. Tipsy, drunk on their own success, and riding the high of their friendship, they slept on the floor together, in one blanket pulled off the day bed in the back room.</p><p>All the while, Elias kept an eye on them from various points in the room. Once from a poster Tim put up, once from a novelty mug Martin brought in, and from a few of the poloroids Sasha hung up around the room. Their attempts to soften the archives were useful, unlike the archivists themselves. Elias was frustrated, and it was beginning to boil over into outrage.</p><p>He couldn’t believe that of the archivists, it was only his Head Archivist, the supposed jewel in the Watcher’s Crown, that hadn’t managed to get marked during his time in the Institute.</p><p>Sasha was marked by the Distortion, even the receptionist was marked by the Distortion, and Martin had two brand new marks! Yet Tim was only marked by the Stranger, and he’d been uncannily lucky about finding statements relating to his specific field of interest. He’d gorged himself on those statements, and seemed to have developed a knack for finding just about whatever he turned his mind to. Elias had watched Sasha ask Tim to find them something on the Corruption, something on the Distortion, and it seemed that with a little effort, Tim could put his hands on any number of relevant statements.</p><p>Whatever jealousy Elias had for that kind of talent, it was somewhat tempered by imagining Gertrude’s reaction to her endeavour to defend the archives with ignorance, simply undone by a little charm.</p><p>But that was the whole problem. Tim got along too well with others. Even when the Distortion was out for blood, even when Martin was undoubtably Corrupted, Tim seemed to make friends and worse, he seemed to keep them. Naturally charismatic, cooperative, and friendly, Tim seemed a hit with his archivists <em>and </em>the first of the many horrible avatars they were to encounter. They weren’t to know that was Michael at his friendliest.</p><p>So Elias weighed up his options.</p><p>He saw how they cared for each other. They’d been willing to fight for Martin, and he saw that had built trust between the archivists. It was easy to see that trust could only serve Elias’ purposes if it was broken. He saw that their cohesion would be a liability, if allowed to fester.</p><p>But, he could encourage these friendships; they were strings he could pull when he needed Tim dragged down a certain path. Furthermore, with all three archivists intact and two of them apparently rushing to get themselves marked, he didn’t see why he couldn’t perform his ritual with whatever archivist got marked with all fourteen entities first. Metaphysically, an assistant archivist could play the same role, if they were marked.</p><p>He slunk out of his office. It was late, and there was nothing more to see in the Institute now.</p><p>He blinked when he noticed all the lights in all the corridors were all still on. He grew suspicious, and headed towards reception. Jon was meant to lock up. Out of habit, he checked his phone for the time in a gesture that reminded him of a checking a pocket watch. Technology had changed a lot since he was young, but getting used to the digital age was only as difficult as getting used to electricity.</p><p>He had a text. That was more surprising than either technological revolution.</p><p> </p><p>Jon: need to talk to you</p><p>Jon: about work</p><p>Jon: are you free?</p><p> </p><p>Having reached reception, Elias tried the front door experimentally. If Jon did what he was paid to do, it would be locked from the outside. It swung open.</p><p>Elias saw everything in the Institute, and rarely concerned himself with who else saw anything. He scowled. Jon was meant to be oblivious. He couldn’t keep up with this.</p><p>It took them ten minutes to arrange drinks at the same bar they briefly visited last week. Of course, Elias knew what Jon would be talking to him about, he’d watched Michael pull Martin apart only to disappear without a trace or trail of blood. He knew that Jon would have heard the screams of terror. What he wanted to know was why Jon would want to tell Elias.</p><p>Elias waited at the bar, watching for Jon. He thought it’d take longer than a week to draw him back here again. If Elias was human, he’d almost think he was being pursued. It was a touching thought.</p><p>Jon strode in, shoulders back and cutting through the crowd with such purpose. He flashed Elias a polite smile of recognition, one that didn’t meet his eyes. He looked as haunted as he had last week, Elias noted. The thought sent a twinge of joy through him.</p><p>Even better, no matter what Jon told him, Elias knew the truth. There were no stakes, and he was free to enjoy the spectacle of a person like Jon trying to piece together the fragments of a night broken by an entity like Michael.</p><p>‘Care for a drink?’ Elias asked, unassuming.</p><p>Jon shook his head gravely. ‘Not tonight, it’s serious.’</p><p>Elias ordered a large glass of white wine, and Jon had a tap water. They sat down at a booth, perhaps even the same one as last week. But Jon was remarkably committed to restraint and sense tonight. Elias smiled.</p><p>‘So, about work.’</p><p>Jon clenched his fist.</p><p>‘I <em>am</em> always asking you about the Institute, so I’m dying to know.’</p><p>‘Not any more you don’t.’</p><p>Elias smiled. His efforts to ignore Jon without avoiding him were paying off. Elias started meeting with Peter more just to give Jon something to schedule, an excuse to communicate without talking once. That cinched it for Peter. He loved to see someone alone in a crowd, and Elias’ barrage of emails and total absence had left Jon more alone than if Elias simply disappeared. It was as if Elias didn’t even care to avoid Jon.</p><p>And it wasn’t like Peter and Elias spoke to each other in these meetings, so overall, the Lonely had nothing to complain about.</p><p>‘Well, I’ve been busy, but I still want to know, of course.’</p><p>Jon sipped at his water, looking wretched. It suited him, in Elias’ opinion. Or at least, it suited his purposes if Jon was hung up on him and loathing every minute of Elias’ presence without connection.</p><p>‘So it’s about the archives.’</p><p>He hurried the words knowing how they would sound in Elias’ ear. And Elias indulged him. He may know that Jon was correct in his fear of the archives and the kind of people the archivists were becoming, but if Jon thought he’d have to work hard to convince him, why would Elias let him down?</p><p>‘The archives? But they’ve been doing some of the best work in the Institute. Their best work yet! What could possibly be wrong with the archives?’</p><p>‘Right, maybe that’s the problem though.’ Jon settled in his seat. ‘Are they under a lot of pressure at the moment?’</p><p>Elias saw a thread he could tug at.</p><p>‘Well, of course. It’s very prestigious, and they know what an honour it is to work with these documents. Did you know, some of these letters, diary entries, and early statements are literally priceless?’</p><p>Jon made a noncommittal hum, pretending to consider how important those dusty old texts could be.</p><p>‘Maybe you should address that though, that sounds like a lot of pressure to put on… what, just the three of them? Maybe just talk to them about how they feel about working together in such close proximity completely isolated from anyone else.’</p><p>He looked at Elias, as if for help. Instead, Elias sighed, sounding exhausted, and rubbed his eyes.</p><p>‘Sorry, maybe it’s late, but why don’t you just spell out what you’re implying.’</p><p>Elias was enjoying making this difficult for Jon, bestowing upon him a fraction of the difficulty Elias felt every time he so much as looked at him knowing he made a mistake. Jon’s brow knitted together and he studied the rim of the glass. Elias took a sip of the wine and waited for Jon to speak again.</p><p>‘I’m <em>implying</em> that they might be under too much pressure. Right, I think that they’re taking it out on each other? I know it doesn’t sound serious, but workplace bullying is real, and if you heard what I heard, then you’d know it’s got really bad with them. I don’t know whether money’s somehow gotten mixed up with them, or whether there’s something else going on, or maybe it’s just that the archives are a bit toxic at the moment. And I mean, it’s just the three of them, locked in together, with all that pressure, and-.’</p><p>Elias looked back at him with wide, blank eyes.</p><p>‘Jon, I totally see what you’re saying. But they’re all friends really, it’s just that sometimes things get a bit heated. They’re not actually locked in the archives either, they’re just high achieving, driven people. And that can cause a bit of tension, too. It can be quite easy to feel jealous or insecure around people like them. I’m not surprised they argue a bit, it happens the most when you’re close like them. You know what it’s like, the people you like the most just get under your skin, I find.’</p><p>Elias gave him an encouraging smile, seeing how it did nothing to reassure Jon. He was trying to think about when someone he cared about seemed to make him angry. He was trying to compare any of the rows he’d had with Georgie, or his grandmother, with the kind of screaming and crashing he heard from the archives. It didn’t quite add up, to Jon.</p><p>He looked physically pained as he tried to compare the idea of work stress to the kind of terror and panic he’d heard before he passed out on the stairs.</p><p>‘No, it’s not… that. It’s not just work stress, I don’t think. I think there’s something wrong with, maybe not with them, but with… their workplace habits.’</p><p>Elias saw a few ways he could play this. He decided quickly.</p><p>‘What are you talking about?’</p><p>Jon took a deep breath.</p><p>‘So… they sleep at work, they don’t sign out and they wear the same clothes pretty regularly, so I know they do, and one of the archivists went on sick leave and then he broke in tonight because he said he needed to see the others, and then… there was <em>screaming</em>, Elias, and I went to go see and-’</p><p>He stopped when he got to the end of the part of the night he could understand. Elias would come back to that.</p><p>‘Then what happened?’ He asked, gently.</p><p>Elias was, before and above anything else, an observer. He remembered how Jon looked last week when he was trying to articulate his experiences. He had the same expression. Frustrated, then lost, as if he was trying to remember a phone number or a name, before his expression smoothed and Elias knew without Knowing that Jon had constructed his answer.</p><p>‘I think I had a seizure. I woke up at the bottom of the stairs, and I didn’t hear anything more so I just walked out. I needed air- oh, god, I’ve forgotten to lock up-‘</p><p>He grimaced, acutely aware that he just told his boss that.</p><p>‘I should go and-’</p><p>He even made a motion to stand up, but Elias placed a hand on Jon’s wrist. Jon flinched, though he stayed in place.</p><p>‘Are you prone to seizures?’</p><p>Jon sighed.</p><p>‘No, but… two in two weeks isn’t worth ignoring. I’m going to see a doctor tomorrow, but I really hope it’s nothing.’</p><p>Elias nodded. He knew there wasn’t a doctor alive who would find a fault in Jon’s brain.</p><p>‘Oh god, you don’t think it was a hallucination, do you?’ Jon sounded exasperated, but Elias knew there was something to push here.</p><p>‘Do <em>you</em>?’ The question would disturb Jon for hours.</p><p>‘No! I’m asking whether you even believe it’s possible for your… precious archive to do any wrong!’</p><p>‘Jon, I believe you. I just don’t know what you expect from me. What do you want me to do?’</p><p>‘I want you to address this with them! If they’re really enriching the institute to the degree your talking about, aren’t you responsible for them?’</p><p>‘Responsible? Now that is an interesting way of thinking about it.’</p><p>Elias was thinking, and tapping a fingertip against his chin. In front of him, Jon looked infuriated. Elias knew he was tired, scared for his health, and frightened by the dynamics he’d seen, and yet, he was thinking about responsibility.</p><p>‘How can I be responsible for something I haven’t seen? Of course I believe you, and I trust your judgement. If you believe the archivists are engaged in some form of… toxicity, then I believe it must be so.’</p><p>Jon was disgusted, and he looked around the room for someone to share his discontent. There was no one. Elias knew there was absolutely no one in Jon’s life he could possibly share his feelings with.</p><p>‘How about this, then. I can offer you full discretion to deal with this however you see fit, and I’ll back whatever course of action you take in order to resolve this issue you’ve highlighted.’</p><p>‘You have to be joking, that’s not how things <em>work-‘</em></p><p>‘Why not? Besides, I believe you, so I trust you to deal with what you’ve seen effectively. I don’t believe I would do a better job than you. So I think this makes the most sense. Alternatively, if you could provide the kind of evidence I would need to address this meaningfully, then perhaps I could resolve this my way. It’s up to you, Jon.’</p><p>Jon’s suspicions could be the wedge Elias needed to drive the archivists apart. He needed them separate, that way, their care for each other may be of some use to Elias, but they needed the doubt Jon could offer them. Whether he confronted them directly or snuck around tallying off snippy comments and mild hostility, Jon would surely play a role in loosening those tight bonds of friendship.</p><p>He didn’t even know what Elias was planning, and Jon still looked like he was dreading Monday.</p><p>‘Fine… I’ll have a word with them. Individually, maybe.’</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Off Guard</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It took Jon a long time to realise his weekends were always the worst day of the week. It’d been weeks now, and he only just realised that he hated the day off. Waking up on Sunday in the single bed, Jon still felt exhausted. It was eleven am. He questioned what he had to get up for.</p><p>Maybe he should have drank with Elias. Maybe he’d have had fun.</p><p>It didn’t matter that he wasn’t hungover. It wouldn’t have mattered if he was.</p><p>Jon hadn’t opened his eyes yet. He stayed where he was in bed. His flat was a mess, and he didn’t want to face it. If he was a responsible adult, today would be a good day to tidy up and battle his nicotine addiction and maybe go for a walk around Battersea Park. The light filtering through his room hit his closed eyelids. He knew it was a nice day. He turned away, and drifted back to sleep.</p><p>It was his phone ringing that woke him up. He patted his hand around, searching for his phone or at least for his glasses so he could look properly. Finding it under his pillow, he picked up.</p><p>‘Hello?’ His voice sounded cracked.</p><p>‘Jon?’</p><p>His eyes opened wide.</p><p>‘Georgie? How did you get this number?’</p><p>‘Afternoon to you too.’</p><p>He smiled, genuinely.</p><p>‘Sorry, no, it’s nice to hear from you! Really nice.’ He cringed, hoping he didn’t sound too enthusiastic. Their breakup hadn’t been all that amicable, but an old friend was an old friend.</p><p>‘Yeah, same. How’ve you been keeping? Heard you graduated with a first.’</p><p>‘And with honours-‘ he didn’t mean to boast, it was just important to him.</p><p>‘Wow! Congratulations. How are you keeping busy these days?’</p><p>Jon looked around at his cluttered bedroom, from his bed, and rubbed his eyes. ‘Just working a lot really, I’m at the Magnus Institute now.’</p><p>She laughed, and Jon felt warm. He hadn’t heard from her since she graduated in third year. There was a whole doctorate between them now, but he felt like he was 19 and introducing himself to her at drinks for the first time all over again.</p><p>‘God, really? With your qualifications? I thought you’d be writing theory by now, go full Professor Sims.’</p><p>He smiled wistfully.</p><p>‘Hm, I think it’s just going to be Doctor Sims for the foreseeable, I’m not even researching or anything, I’m a receptionist.’</p><p>She gasped.</p><p>‘But that’s insane? You’re probably the most qualified person there?’</p><p>He’d forgotten that, somehow. ‘I guess the last thing I submitted was… somewhat controversial. Um, I didn’t get any approval to carry on.’</p><p>He heard a sharp intake of breath down the phone. ‘Aw, that’s really not-‘</p><p>He didn’t want to talk about it.</p><p>‘Couldn’t stop me graduating though! Look, let’s not- anyway, how about you? You were doing parapsychology while I was still doing boring old normal psychology. Faired any better on the job market?’</p><p>He heard her laugh slightly down the phone. His heart ached. He’d forgotten all of this.</p><p>‘Well, I’m a horror podcaster so no? Not at all. Still, I’ve started making money off it now, which is nice!’</p><p>Jon smiled. ‘Yeah, that’s great! What’s it called?’</p><p>He didn’t listen to podcasts or ghost stories but he missed Georgie.</p><p>‘It’s called ‘What The Ghost?’ We investigate ghost stories and try and figure out what might be plausible, what might have happened, that sort of a thing. It’s good! Of course I’d say that, but you know, we won an award so..’</p><p>Jon made a sound of agreement.</p><p>‘Sounds just like what my lot do. Also, you keep saying we, so unless the Admiral’s playing a significant role-‘</p><p>She laughed a lot, and Jon sat up in bed a little more.</p><p>‘Course you haven’t forgotten the Admiral, I was worried I’d have to remind you. And yeah, I say we- me and my girlfriend, we’re doing this together.’</p><p>Jon beamed; he was genuinely happy for her. But his voice sounded strained and he didn’t know how not to sound jealous when he wasn’t. At least, not of his ex and not of the new girlfriend.</p><p>‘Oh that’s great! It’s nice to have someone you can work with, right?’</p><p>Georgie was polite enough to agree without pressing, or she was too happy to notice. Either way, Jon was glad she didn’t linger on the subject of love.</p><p>‘Yeah, it is. Listen, the Admiral’s had kittens-‘</p><p>‘What? I thought the admiral was a boy!’</p><p>‘Well, so did we, hence the kittens. We’d have had him fixed if we knew. Bit of a surprise really.’</p><p>‘Is he okay?’</p><p>Her voice sounded fond when she spoke next, and Jon didn’t even feel patronised.</p><p>‘Yeah, the Admiral’s okay. I was just thinking, I’m not really in a position to look after that many cats, and I’ve managed to home all the others and if you can’t have a cat that’s fine, I’ll definitely find this one a good home too, but I was wondering-‘</p><p>‘Do I want a kitten?’</p><p>There was a moment where Jon thought his eagerness sounded stupid. But when Georgie spoke again, she sounded cheerful, pleased even.</p><p>‘Silly question, really. You’re such a cat person the only question was whether or not you already had one or two or twenty.’</p><p>He smiled.</p><p>‘I don’t even have a cat, yet,’ he couldn’t contain his excitement entirely. So he decided to throw caution entirely to the wind. ‘When can I-?’</p><p>‘Honestly, whenever! I’ve moved up to London-‘</p><p>‘Same here-‘</p><p>‘Great! Yeah, any day this week would be good for me.’</p><p>Jon thought.</p><p>‘Ah, my hours aren’t exactly great. Could you hold onto it until next Sunday?’</p><p>‘Oh, yeah totally. Next Sunday it is!’</p><p>‘Could you send me a picture?’</p><p>She laughed, and Jon could almost see her face, smiling.</p><p>‘Need a new lock screen?’</p><p>‘I’m not that bad!’</p><p>Jon felt better though. Perhaps he was deluding himself if the thought of a cat was enough to get him out of bed at midday, but he didn’t mind. And talking to Georgie was nice too. He saved her number, and a picture of the kitten came through. He melted. Apparently it was six weeks old, and it was a tabby just like the Admiral.</p><p>The kitten looked just like the Admiral had at that age. Jon smiled. They’d been young. Or at least, he had. Georgie had been in her second year before she rusticated, and she’d taken a gap year before she started. She was twenty three when they met, and they didn’t get together right away. He was in second year, and she was finishing third year when they’d just drifted closer. It was a sweet relationship, and one that didn’t quite end the way he expected. He wanted to carry on studying, she wanted to make it in the real world, she took the Admiral and Jon stayed on. The ending sounded cleaner than it was. Jon hadn’t stayed in touch with any of their joint friendship group because realistically, it was just Georgie’s.</p><p>They’d only got chatting at LGBT drinks when Jon was a fresher because Georgie thought he was a finalist. He looked so adult and out of place and bored that Georgie had mistaken him for mature. Ironically, she’d been the one to clue him in on the definition of sharking, but it didn’t sound so bad to Jon. He’d never gotten along well with his own age group. Now he was older, he could see why it was frowned upon, and he’d always been glad he and Georgie were just friends in his first year.</p><p>He couldn’t help but reminisce when he looked at this new kitten, a carbon copy of the cat they’d got together the second they’d moved out of halls and into their first flat. They called it the real world, then.</p><p>Jon switched his phone off, and started to get dressed. He checked the time a few moments later, and looked at the default phone background. It was blue.</p><p>He changed it to the picture of the kitten, perhaps it’d inspire him to name it.</p><p>Pulling on a jumper, he thought about the day. He decided to go to the library and use the computer to look up some resources on workplace harassment. He dithered over the skirt and the jeans. It was his day off, and he did like dressing without a dress code. He didn’t know whether the Institute actually had one, but considering his tastes, he erred on the side of caution. He erred in his own home, and on his day off too.</p><p>He was feeling brave today though, so he went for it.</p><p>Bromley was nice enough, and he didn’t get stared at walking down the High Street, so it always felt safe enough, too. He listened to music and tried not to walk in time to the beat.</p><p>He smiled at the librarian on the front desk, feeling like he understood her a little more now he did her job. She didn’t smile back. He understood that too, and it did nothing to dampen his mood.</p><p>He pulled up a seat at the computer, and even the slow log in didn’t annoy him like it ought to. He was saving up for a new laptop, so it wasn’t the end of the world. He got used to visiting the library to use a computer, and he soon found a good few sites dedicated to workplace abuse, harassment, and bullying.</p><p>Words like ‘intimidation’, ‘humiliation’ and ‘denigration’ kept cropping up, as did gaslighting and threatening. Jon copied links and added them to a google doc, and he started printing a couple of the sheets. He had no idea how he was going to talk about this, and he had half an idea to simply hide the print outs among a bunch of statements and hope that whichever archivist stumbled across it had the self-awareness to recognise themself.</p><p>But Jon knew he wasn’t going to do that. He was going to subject Tim, Sasha, and Martin to his concern, no matter how mortifying it would be for them all.</p><p>It struck him that work was his life. Remembering Georgie and his life before the Institute, he realised that he didn’t stop thinking about work. He was seized with the desire to get a life.</p><p>He picked up a book on his way out. He hadn’t carved out any time for himself since he left school, and even then, me-time was spent on desperate flights of escapism for as long as he could remember. Still, falling back on old hobbies was the first step to forming some new ones.</p><p>He downloaded Tinder and messaged a stranger when he got home. He read a book. He worried about tomorrow without even thinking about it.</p><p>It was his most outgoing day off since he started, and he was quietly relieved it was over when he called it a night at nine o’clock.</p><p>He woke up at six am and got ready for work. The feeling that he lived and breathed his job hadn’t gone anywhere. On the tube, he looked back at his messages. She was pretty, and conversation was nice, but he realised that all he’d been able to say for himself was… work. And he didn’t even believe in the ghosts that occupied his life, even indirectly.</p><p>The days were getting lighter, and Jon remembered summer. The last few hadn’t even really felt like summer. Summer felt like something for young people, and Jon was nearly 29. He’d grown out of it. But summer had been nice, when he was younger. There’d been wandering around parks and streets when he was a child, before the police and the abduction he didn’t think about, and then when he was older, there were cafés to study in and when he was a little older than that, open fields to drink in and the music from big CD players filling the evening air. Summer was nice.</p><p>He was actually beginning to wish Georgie hadn’t called. He hadn’t felt right since. He questioned whether he could possibly still like her, but he wasn’t sure he ever did, not like that at least. They were friends. He still wanted to be friends, but not if it left him feeling like this.</p><p>He got off the tube, and strode through the station. It was always so overwhelmingly busy at this hour, and today was no exception. The Institute was only a short walk away, and soon he was back behind the desk.</p><p>There was a worm squirming in one of the ten deep scratch marks on the desk’s surface. It was silvery white, with a black head, and it writhed aimlessly in that trench. It revolted Jon, so he crushed it under a book without mercy or thought.</p><p>He’d have forgotten about it, if there weren’t more of them. Jon bought tea from the café when he found a worm in the bottom of his mug. He washed it down the drain, but he didn’t fancy using the mug afterwards.</p><p>Back at his desk, he pulled the sheets he printed out of his messenger bag. He set the sheets on the desk. He’d printed out a few copies, and he took them into his office. He had a vague plan. He wanted to be as direct as possible. By now, he knew well enough that first members of staff in the Institute were always the archivists. He was sure they just left through the fire escape and walked around to the front to sign in at opening time, but he was determined to ignore that and focus on one thing at a time.</p><p>Or should he talk about how a positive relationship to the work environment was important for fostering healthy workplace relationships?</p><p>He ran his hands down his face, pulling slightly. He did know he was a hypocrite, he just had to hope they didn’t know that.</p><p>As always, Tim walked in first. Out of a habit Jon had internalised on the unconscious level, Jon looked at the screen before anything else.</p><p> </p><p>Look</p><p> </p><p>It read. As always, he did. Tim looked so nice, and it made Jon so angry. He knew that Tim was doing something wrong. He knew Tim was living in the archives, and he wasn’t quite sure how he was embroiled within the toxic dynamic that Jon knew had blossomed in the archive, but he knew he heard Tim’s voice down there with the rest of them. He didn’t know how Tim got to greet him so easily, lean on his desk so casually, and flick the hair that was falling into his eyes out of his face with the grace of a man who never felt self-conscious.</p><p>‘Before you sign in, Tim, I’m going to need to borrow you for a moment. Are you free right now?’</p><p>Tim looked surprised.</p><p>‘Oh, sure thing. What’s up?’</p><p>Jon got up and gestured for Tim to follow him. Jon glanced in the reflection to catch a glimpse of Tim’s expression. He was looking for something intimidating or threatening like from the website, something that might indicate all this friendliness was just a show for him, a bystander and an observer, who could verify that Tim was a nice guy really. Jon wasn’t prepared to buy it. But Tim looked placid, and a little dozy, which was normal considering it was barely 8 AM.</p><p>He was still early for work by his own volition though, so Jon had no sympathy.</p><p>Tim sat on the chair opposite the desk, and Jon stressed. He’d learned to relax his face into a blank slate when he was particularly anxious around others. It made him look severe and in control when he was close to losing his nerve.</p><p>‘Thanks for coming in. There was an incident on Saturday with one of your assistants, and I thought— I would like to talk to you about it.’</p><p>Tim had forgotten he was Sasha and Martin’s boss. He’d started thinking of Elias as all their bosses. But he straightened up and played the part.</p><p>‘Absolutely. Um, let’s hear it.’</p><p>Jon stared for a minute, unsure of how to go on. He’d been preparing for denial, and this kind of acceptance caught him off guard.</p><p>Jon’s gaze was devastating, and Tim felt he was beginning to fold.</p><p>He’d been avoiding eye contact with people recently, he didn’t know what had got into him but he figured something in his demeaner had changed. People told him things now whenever he asked, but they seemed to regret it. There were plenty of times Tim regretted asking, so he’d tried to stop asking questions and looking at people so directly.</p><p>If it felt like this when he looked at people, he wasn’t going to take the habit back up. Except in this instance. He met Jon’s glare.</p><p>‘What’s this about, Jon?’</p><p>‘The archives.’ Jon blurted out. Tim realised he’d done it again, even if he didn’t know exactly what it was he did. He then realised he’d done it on purpose just to break the tension. He knew that Jon would elaborate because Tim wanted him to, and they always did when he wanted them to. Tim began to feel terrible.</p><p>‘On Saturday, when I was packing up, you know, between closing to the public and actually locking up, Martin broke in. Well, I let him in, but I thought he was going to batter the door down, and when he came in he looked like death. He’s been off for a week and he shows up an hour before closing time and he asks me… he asks me if I’m scared of him, and worse? I said yes, and worse? It was true. I was really scared.’</p><p>‘And then he says he needs to see you and Sasha and the next thing I hear is screaming. Tim, I thought someone was getting murdered down there. It’s not healthy! You all spend too much time down there, and it’s clearly starting to spill over!’</p><p>Jon didn’t realise he’d raised his voice, and Tim didn’t realise how much he have rathered carry on his staring contest with Jon</p><p>Without another word, Jon slid over one of the sheets about the definition of workplace bullying.</p><p>Tim looked from the sheet to Jon, who still looked hard faced. But Tim knew that there were layers here, that Jon was frightened of what happened, frightened of the confrontation he caused, and, more abstract than those things, frightened of the truth he’d given up of his own volition.</p><p>‘I appreciate the concern, but I promise you, you’ve just got the wrong end of the stick.’</p><p>‘How could I misinterpret-‘</p><p>Tim lied, quickly, and well.</p><p>‘We made a huge breakthrough on a statement. I know that doesn’t mean much outside of our context, but seriously, this was huge news! Think hitting the jackpot and winning the lottery at the same time- so we called Martin in, and we celebrated.’</p><p>Jon desperately tried to scour his memory, tried to remember what he heard.</p><p>‘The screaming…’</p><p>‘It was <em>very </em>exciting news.’</p><p>Jon’s jaw dropped.</p><p>‘You cannot possibly be serious right now.’</p><p>Tim was surprised by where Jon’s mind was at, but it was distracting enough to cover the facts excellently. So he doubled down on it, and nodded conspiratorially at Jon’s incredulous face. He couldn’t wait to tell Martin and Sasha about this.</p><p>Jon was reeling. He withdrew the sheets. He felt so naïve.</p><p>‘That’s… that’s a whole other breech of every… aren’t those documents special? You can’t have a <em>threesome</em>-‘</p><p>Jon had felt so guilty, so unprofessional, about what had happened with Elias. Tim shrugged his shoulders.</p><p>‘I mean. We usually wait until after closing time but, you know,’</p><p>‘Yes, exciting news. Oh my god.’</p><p>‘Is that all you wanted to talk about?’</p><p>Jon nodded his head emphatically.</p><p>‘Yes!’</p><p>‘Okay! Let’s catch up again sometime!’ Tim said as lightly as possible, and Jon all but snarled.</p><p>In the archives, Tim laughed almost until he threw up. He rubbed the back of his neck, and tried to sober up. If Martin was doing the same thing as Tim, with the questions and the eye contact, then he had someone to talk about it with. It was funny, but before Tim diffused the situation, it’d been bleak. He’d never done it on purpose before.</p><p>Then he thought of the look on Jon’s face when he’d sign Martin and Sasha in to work, and he howled with laughter all over again. He had to stifle the sound though, now he knew how it travelled to reception.</p><p>He waited for Martin and Sasha to arrive, and when they did, their bemused expressions set him off all over again. This time, he didn’t bother to keep it quiet, as Jon couldn’t accuse him of laughing maniacally alone now that he had his friends with him.</p><p>‘Tim, we were going to ask if you knew why Jon was being weird with us this morning.’ Sasha started.</p><p>‘Guessing you had something to do with that though?’ Martin added.</p><p>‘How could you tell?’ Tim teased.</p><p>‘Don’t exactly need to be psychic-‘ Martin waved in Tim’s general direction, and looked at Sasha.</p><p>‘Oh no, it’s obvious.’ Sasha folded her arms and pretended to be cross.</p><p>Tim got serious again. He had to keep his focus. He wanted to see if it would work if he tried to do it again. ‘But it helps though, doesn’t it. Being psychic.’</p><p>‘You too?’ Martin gasped.</p><p>They spent the rest of the morning discussing what it was like to ask someone a question and get more than they bargained for, more than they ever wanted to know. They tried it out on each other too, at first asking the silly kind of truth or dare questions Tim would ask at parties.</p><p>‘Wait, so what did you tell Jon to make him look at us like that?’ Sasha asked.</p><p>Tim leaned back in his seat, and Martin felt dread. ‘Christ,’ he muttered.</p><p>‘Oh nothing bad. Just told him we were having it off.’</p><p>‘You told him what?!’ Sasha yelled, and Martin laughed at her.</p><p>‘As if she’d go for you,’ Martin teased.</p><p>‘Said you were too.’</p><p>‘What, shagging Sasha? Who’d believe that?’</p><p>Tim rolled his eyes.</p><p>‘Actually, I didn’t tell him anything. He jumped to the conclusion we have threesomes-‘</p><p>Sasha stood up, ‘oh you have to be kidding me.’</p><p>‘I was getting <em>stabbed</em>, what does he think happens-‘ he shrieked, and Tim’s sides hurt from laughing.</p><p>From upstairs, it didn’t sound much like last Saturday night. But Jon doubted his perceptions just enough to accept the bizarre reality Tim presented him. He wanted to pull the fire alarms and dump cold water over them, but according to an email he sent around to everyone, apparently Elias had just switched to CO2. He didn’t quite want to kill them all, or at least, not enough to deal with the bodies. He sighed, and rested his head in his hands. Signing in the other staff was a welcome break from thinking about the archives and, far worse, the archivists.</p><p>Absentmindedly, their presence already beginning to fade into the background noise of his increasingly unusual life, Jon crushed another worm under one of the useless sheets he brought in.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. A Problem Shared</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Tim, Sasha, and Martin were locked in a discussion about their changes. Martin thought they couldn’t be changing that much, perhaps his idea of supernatural influence looked too much like decay for him to recognise their waning humanity for what it was. Sasha was relatively optimistic about the prospects of their newfound power; after all, while Michael was wrong, and cruel, you couldn’t deny that he was useful. Tim didn’t seem particularly reflective, but he was thinking about what it might mean for them, and for his personal need to get even with the force that stole his brother.</p><p>Together, they talked about what they’d discovered they could do now.</p><p>So far, Tim and Martin had got the truth out of Jon- someone they didn’t particularly know, and someone who didn’t particularly trust them.</p><p>Sasha was eager to see what she could do. She’d read as many statements as Martin, so she ought to have the same abilities as him, but she wanted to make sure. Though they tried to try it out on each other, they seemed rather more inclined to tell each other the truth anyway.</p><p>Tim was pulling out statements from the shelves, claiming he got a good feeling from some of them, and directing Martin and Sasha to the statements he’d personally tidied up. There were all sorts of stories about people becoming something they weren’t before, and not all of them were bad. Most of them were worse than bad. Like Prentiss’ statement.</p><p>A certain hush fell over them as they considered the possibility of becoming like her. The thought of it was unbearable. And, though undeniably powerful, Michael was hardly a desirable kindred spirit.</p><p>The phone rang, it’s shrill tone rupturing the quiet. Sasha jumped, and tried to hide it by answering the phone.</p><p>‘Hello?’</p><p>‘Oh, Sasha, hi. Hope I’m not… interrupting.’</p><p>The phones in the Institute were just too old to do anything fancy as fancy as speakerphone, but in the near silence, Tim and Martin could hear everything Jon said. Sasha sat on the table, and Tim and Martin both leaned in, sharing a single expression of delighted disbelief.</p><p>‘Um, nothing important anyway.’</p><p>Jon made a flustered sound and said something under his breath that sounded like ‘well that tracks.’</p><p>He recovered himself immediately, but not quickly enough to escape the archivists notice. The three of them looked at each other. Amazed that Jon would believe something so stupid without question, and amazed he’d be so disparaging about their hypothetical efforts.</p><p>‘Subject here by name of Naomi Herne, she wishes to archive her statement directly, no interest in follow up. Anyone available to take the statement?’</p><p>Sasha pointed at the phone and nodded. They’d just been talking about an opportunity for self-discovery, and this could be it. Martin nodded and Tim gave her a thumbs up.</p><p>‘Actually I think I could pop up now!’</p><p>‘Great, see you shortly.’</p><p>She put the phone down and snorted.</p><p>‘Well I’ll let you know how telepathy goes,’ she said before heading up. She almost considered messing her hair up a little, just to get a rise out of Jon, but she couldn’t be bothered with that. Besides, Naomi was cute. Sasha gave her a friendly smile as she approached, and Jon returned it, wearily. Naomi merely huffed, and crossed her arms.</p><p>They sat in Jon’s office. It was the best place to take statements because it was so near the front door that the subjects never had far to go or opportunity to meddle. Sasha cast an eye around Jon’s workspace, comparing it to the archives she’d made a home of. She was heartened to see mismatched cushions on the chairs and psychology magazines in tidy piles on the desk. It was good to know he wasn’t just a paranoid workaholic, but she did intend to keep her prying to a minimum. Or rather, to focus her prying on the subject.</p><p>Sasha placed the tape recorder on the desk, and before she even got a word in, Naomi scoffed.</p><p>‘You’re serious? You actually want me to tell my story into that rattling piece of junk? I see why no-one takes you guys seriously.’</p><p>Sasha forced a smile.</p><p>‘It’s the best recording equipment we have, tape’s a lot more durable than digital recording.’</p><p>‘Durable! I’d say, that thing must be thirty years old.’</p><p>‘Oh, much older than that, I imagine. Anyway, I’m gonna start recording, and I’ll ask for your name, date, and a brief summary of what happened. Any questions?’</p><p>‘Yeah, actually. When are you going to get this place clean? It’s disgusting, you know.’</p><p>Naomi gestured to the worm struggling around Jon’s desk. Sasha crushed it before it crawled too close.</p><p>‘You can go home, you know. Come back another day?’</p><p>The look Naomi gave her suggested she had something sharp to say, but her eyes softened into something Sasha recognised as worry. She sympathised, and offered her a warmer look in turn.</p><p>‘No, I don’t want to… just… I guess I’m just desperate. The last paranormal investigator I went to laughed at me when I suggested talking to you. Still, I-I guess you have to believe me.’</p><p>Sasha nodded. She understood. ‘People tend to have that reaction when I tell them anything about my job, too.’</p><p>Sasha looked at her, and she saw that she was wealthy. Her clothes were bland and branded, nothing special and yet overtly expensive. The way she drew herself up into the chair like she was afraid of getting dirty was… a tedious mannerism for Sasha to watch. She adjusted her tie, and took a deep breath before pressing record on the tape.</p><p>She nodded at Naomi, who spoke uncertainly.</p><p>‘My name is Naomi Herne… um, I- I’m making a… statement? It’s about the funeral o-of my fiancé, Evan Lukas. The date is the, shit, what’s the date today?’</p><p>‘13th of July, 2016,’ Sasha supplied.</p><p>‘Thanks. Um.’</p><p>‘Statement begins,’ said Sasha, looking into Naomi’s eyes and willing her to talk, just like how Tim and Martin described.</p><p>And talk she did.</p><p>She spoke without hesitation, or flinching, or pausing for more than breath. She seemed to recall every vivid detail of her horrid, impossible experience. Curiously, Sasha knew with every instinct in her body that Naomi was not lying. The truth, of course, was subjective and subtle, but it must exist, because Sasha knew that Naomi wasn’t fabricating a single detail.</p><p>And Sasha felt bad for her by the time Naomi finished her story because Naomi didn’t see what Sasha could, as she facing away from the door. She didn’t know quite when the office door was replaced by Michael’s but Sasha knew immediately that she was about to pay her debt quickly and without hesitation.</p><p>Sure, what Naomi had told her suggested that she wouldn’t like the Distortion much. But Sasha had read some statements, and Michael’s tricks were mostly harmless. It was Michael himself who did the damage, and this was just his door.</p><p>And she wanted to see what was beyond that door.</p><p>She was staring at the space just behind Naomi for the latter part of her statement. Once it was over, despite there being nowhere else for her to go, Sasha still pointed Naomi in the direction of the door. She wasn’t going to have her end of the bargain disqualified on a technicality.</p><p>‘Aren’t you coming?’</p><p>Sasha smiled easily. ‘Oh, I have a few files I need to fill out before I archive your statement. Jon will show you out of the Institute though.’</p><p>Naomi nodded, and walked through the door, totally failing to notice it wasn’t bright yellow on the way in.</p><p>Sure, Sasha thought, Naomi wouldn’t like the Distortion. But there were worse things out there, and thinking logically, Sasha would probably sacrifice a hundred Naomis for one Martin. Or Tim. Whether she’d do it for herself was a bit of a different question, but she didn’t have her doubts about what Tim or Martin would do in her position. So she owed it to them.</p><p>Though her hands shook a bit at the sight of an endless corridor, she realised she might have done this even without obligation. It may have been worth it, just to know.</p><p>There were worse things, she reminded herself. There were worse things Michael could do, and far worse things than Michael. She thought about Prentiss.</p><p>The worms were concerning. She knew they were nothing to do with Martin, or that if they were, they were as much to do with her as with him. They had both been infected even for those brief moments. She reminded herself to go around the Institute with the fire extinguishers after closing time, again. And to stock up. They made her feel safer, and she knew Martin felt the same way, even if he did sleep with a corkscrew under his pillow, where he could keep his hands on it at all times.</p><p>Sasha didn’t live in the archives like him; she still returned to her apartment for at least a few hours a night. But it didn’t feel safe in the same way as the Institute. If something happened to her there, at least Tim and Martin would know.</p><p>She waited for the door to turn back into the door to reception. Then she rolled her eyes and closed them for a moment, knowing that things of this nature liked to operate in secret. When she looked back, as expected, the correct door was in front of her.</p><p>There was something else Tim and Martin had mentioned about their new-found telepathy. They said it felt great. She wasn’t sure what to expect, but she guessed at some messed up kind of afterglow, or just an exaggerated sense of satisfaction, or even something they were too embarrassed to say out loud. Instead, she felt the need to look at her face. Sure enough, the dark circles under her eyes had totally lifted out. She’d only slept a few hours last night, yet she felt completely rested.</p><p>She prodded her face for a moment, before accepting the unexpected boost.</p><p>Sasha left the office as nonchalantly as she came, and Jon looked behind her.</p><p>‘Naomi still using the room?’</p><p>Sasha hadn’t thought that far ahead, but in a sudden moment of inspiration, she asked;</p><p>‘Who?’</p><p>Jon laughed. ‘Just let her know to leave the key card when she comes out.’</p><p>Sasha felt bad about this, but she had to follow through now. She laughed a little like she was uncomfortable, and rubbed her arm.</p><p>‘I don’t… follow? Exactly?’</p><p>Jon’s smile faltered. ‘Naomi Herne, subject, just now?’</p><p>Sasha cast her eyes upwards, as if thinking deeply. The ends justified the means, and Jon wouldn’t understand even if she tried to tell him the truth. She wouldn’t have understood before artefact storage, and even then, it’d be hard to justify what she just did to someone. He didn’t understand the context.</p><p>So she waved the piece of paper she used to crush the worm at Jon. She kept the splatter to herself and hoped it looked enough like paperwork to go without question.</p><p>‘Just came for this. Um, office’s all yours now though.’</p><p>Jon’s face fell.</p><p>‘No, no you didn’t. I called you because-‘</p><p>He got up and looked in the office Sasha knew was empty. He gestured to where Naomi would be sitting, and looked over. He did a double take.</p><p>‘Where’d she go?’</p><p>Sasha looked blank.</p><p>‘Well she couldn’t have gone far! There’s one.. there’s only one door.’ For a wild moment, he eyed the window, but it was still locked. It had always been locked, and he knew that deep down. He looked back at Sasha, and at the empty seat, and slumped in the doorway.</p><p>‘I… I’d best be off.’ She gestured to the archives and tried to look a little put off, but concerned. She wanted to speak to Tim and Martin.</p><p>Jon stared at her, before walking to the front desk and falling to his desk chair in a trance.</p><p>‘Oh, of course. Yes. Best get back to it.’ His voice sounded distant.</p><p>He didn’t watch her leave. Sasha watched his eyes dart from one side of the screen to the other, undoubtably combing through the sign in form for Naomi Herne, muttering under his breath about ‘must be here,’ and ‘just did this’, and ‘come on, come on, come <em>on</em>’. He was completely oblivious to her now, so she lingered for a moment. She was captivated. Judging by his expression, and from what she knew of these things, she would bet serious money that Naomi Herne’s name was nowhere to be found on that document. Maybe not even on this earth, until she resurfaced. And she would, Sasha believed.</p><p>His panic was clearly mounting, and Sasha observed as he desperately looked through the draws for something, found an old, leather bound tome, and fumbled for a pen. She noted that as his anxiety clearly began to peak, he dropped the ball point on the floor several times, and bumped his head on the underside of the desk once. Rubbing the back of his head, he opened the book, flicked to nearly the midpoint, and hastily jotted something down. He looked curious for a moment, and flicked to the beginning of the book, and began quickly turning pages, clearly looking for something. He found it, whatever it was, and started typing furiously into the computer.</p><p>Sasha felt more than well-rested, she felt positively caffeinated. She tore her eyes away from the picture of paranoia Jon made, and silently walked back down to the archives. She needed to talk to Tim and Martin, now.</p><p>Jon rubbed his face. There was no trace of a human being named Naomi Herne signing in. The analogue log was something Rosie told him about, once, and typically he forgot about it. She said there’d be subjects he’d want to make a note of, that he’d know it when he saw it. He saw it now, plain as day. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten until now, and with the book solidly in his hands, he remembered something else too. He signed Naomi in first though, estimating a time of arrival and deliberately leaving a few question marks in the column for sign out times. Then he looked through the rest of the book for the employment details Rosie seemed to find so crucial.</p><p>He knew who he worked for. He didn’t work for Elias, but he knew that. Solum. He worked for Solum.</p><p>But he didn’t expect to know the CEO. They’d even met a few regularly, and he was always laughing and joking in a distant, unapproachable way. Jon had never tried to reciprocate the banter when Peter Lukas arrived at the Institute for near daily meeting with Elias. Jon had never thought these meetings to be significant, they were just one more thing he did at the Institute. He didn’t know <em>that</em> was his manager.</p><p>He turned to Google for more information on Peter Lukas, but only found any information on a property developer of the same name, and something to do with a cargo shipping company. He found nothing at all when he looked up Solum. Nothing to do with any agencies or staffing companies, anyway. Ironically, Solum translated from Latin seemed to mean only, or alone.</p><p>Jon supposed whoever was behind the marketing was trying to appeal to ideas of exclusivity, or uniqueness.</p><p>He only had to wait until tomorrow for some answers though, and he had a few already.</p><p>He remembered what Rosie said though. If you don’t work for Elias, leave. She had sounded so haunted, so hopeless, it made Jon consider his options. She meant it, obviously, for whatever reason. And it was obvious that Jon’s health had gone to hell since he started at the Institute. It was almost funny that he’d made such an effort to learn about toxic work relationships just to avoid thinking about the workplace itself. Just one of the things he was too scared to examine in any detail.</p><p>He had a choice and a list of pros and cons. Remembering people he didn’t know, forgetting things he should… Jon already had a doctor’s appointment booked in the week, but he had more and more he wanted to discuss. He was a frayed nerve, a twitching eye, and a nervous tic in human skin. And he didn’t know when it happened to him, when this swelling fear had pushed out all things Jon and replaced it with all things anxious. He was willing to bet that work wasn’t helping though. After all, the seizure happened at work, as did the dissociative episode when he was locking up.</p><p>Then Jon returned to planet earth, where his degree was useless and the work he did for it had already been unequivocally rejected, and where the cryptic things ex-coworkers said about employment records weren’t worth the paper they were written on. Rosie seemed so sure that so much hinged on these employment details, but Jon knew there were many reasons why someone ended up where they did, and many more reasons why they stayed. Even when it was bad.</p><p>When he closed the book, Jon no longer entertained the idea of leaving. It was a silly thought. His health and his work were two separate elements his life with overlap, but no correlation. He was an adult, it was normal.</p><p>He was an adult, he knew what he was doing.</p><p>He squished a worm, almost without looking. He saw them on the periphery, and the action had become automatic. They were everywhere these days.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Deathtrap</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>cw: worms (violence, horror)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For the next few weeks, he’d squash worms. And a few members of staff would go on and on about some song they heard on the radio.</p>
<p>‘Can you hear them singing?’ A librarian asked, once. She sounded so eager and excited, Jon didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no music playing whatsoever. He nodded, and she seemed contented.</p>
<p>The Institute’s infestation had left Jon seeking out the reassuringly disposable cups from the café or the breakroom, and he overheard to colleagues talking about music. He didn’t catch the band’s name, but he was looking to get into new artists. Everything he liked before just seemed stale.</p>
<p>‘Can you hear their song?’</p>
<p>He didn’t actually discern any details about the genre or style, or anything about the musicians at all. Still, probably for the best. It all seemed very sentimental, and love songs weren’t really his thing anyway. It seemed like an earworm though, as a good few researchers were always humming something catchy under their breaths. Nothing distinct though.</p>
<p>And as the week wore on, the atmosphere got thicker. Breathing felt harder, the air felt wet and dense and Jon had a permanent headache. He squished a worm. A thick, dark, viscous substance collected on the book he used. A hard crust formed, and it smelt foul.</p>
<p>More people were calling in sick. Jon questioned whether the worms spread disease, and killed them with a righteous fervour fuelled by a latent fear, one he refused to acknowledge.</p>
<p>The Institute drove on, and in an emergency meeting Elias called that Jon organised, Jon suggested they close to the general public. It was quickly agreed. Elias assured them that the situation was being managed, and that pest control were due in any day.</p>
<p>When he went home, Jon felt dirty even after he showered. Nothing made him feel clean, not properly. He was constantly looking in the periphery for worms. They were never in his apartment, but he never felt safe there either. His skin felt slick, and for the first time since he was a teenager, Jon browsed the skin care aisle when he next bought groceries. Jon kept antibacterial by his desk, and it did nothing to cut through the sheer layer of build-up.</p>
<p>His desk was sticky. He wiped down his desk, his hands, his wrists and finally he rolled up his shirt sleeves and disinfected as much skin as he could reach under his clothes. He swiped at his face, and cheeks, and even the typically dry skin on the tip of his nose seemed to sweat something putrid and thick, and nothing cleared the film that formed at the start of the day and thickened until its end. Jon added this to the list of symptoms he was going to have to bring up to the GP, and he bit his lip and worried. He didn’t tell anyone.</p>
<p>Because there was no one to tell, not apart from Tim, or Sasha, or Martin, or god forbid, Elias, and they weren’t close enough to Jon for him to divulge these details. He liked them well enough, when one of them made him laugh it was like an oasis of normalcy in this rotting desert, but he couldn’t share the personal, or the gross, details of his life with these relative strangers.</p>
<p>By midweek, two of the researchers stopped coming in. No sick note, no leave, just gone.</p>
<p>Jon hadn’t thought about emergency contacts since he left his grandma as one when he was accepting his contract. But when he called those numbers on Saturday afternoon, because that was somehow part of his role, because it wasn’t anyone else’s, the people on the other end of the line seemed confused. Hannah’s own parents didn’t know she wasn’t at work, and neither did Tobias’.</p>
<p>Jon knitted his fingers together as he received the news. He took his glasses off, and rubbed his dirty fingertips against his sweating temples and tried not to imagine leaving filthy smudges. He knew what to do though.</p>
<p>He was drafting the email to Elias when the fire alarm went off. The sound went through Jon like a physical blow, and he recoiled, before sighing at the inconvenience and squashing the worry like a worm.</p>
<p>He picked up the sticky laminated sheet detailing the evacuation plan, quickly cast his eyes over it before standing by the front door and seeing everyone else to the designated meeting point. There was a code on the back of the sheet to unlock all of the automatic doors, and he punched it into the panel next to the switch for the lights in reception.</p>
<p>There was a full, and well organised evacuation plan, and obviously Jon executed it, mechanical and easily followed, easily following. The entire Institute filed out of their offices and cubicles, and stood outside the building in rows organised by department. Jon took the register. He felt like he was at once the scared child and the stern teacher leading the fire drill, like he was steadying his own singing nerves. Jon went from department to department, and called out each name, ticking off each member of staff, skipping over the two researchers he knew were not at work.</p>
<p>They were not the only ones missing.</p>
<p>Jon tried not to look at the empty space in the meeting point for the archives. He could avoid looking at the spot the archivists should stand, but the names on the page were not blank. There was no avoiding the fact that there were four people still in that building that Jon didn’t necessarily like, not all the time, but four people he cared about, nonetheless.</p>
<p>Sasha, Martin, Tim, and Elias were all still inside. He tried to get the fire brigade’s attention.</p>
<p>Their arrival had proven that this was not a drill. Instead, the firefighter said something loud and aggressive and Jon didn’t process it at all. The figure in the fireproof clothing and obscuring helmet pushed Jon away from the building and back together with the crowd.</p>
<p>Jon stood elbow to elbow with someone from the library, but he didn’t have a department to join. He ran the Institute alone.</p>
<p>He clutched the register like a holy text, but all it showed him was the missing.</p>
<p>His eyes flicked from the door to the register and back again, willing the archivists to emerge.</p>
<p>Once the fire brigade left though, replaced by paramedics clad from head to foot in bright yellow rubber hazmat suits, Jon knew he couldn’t just leave them in the Institute to whatever fate was waiting for them. This wasn’t a drill, there was no training or procedure in the world for this, and there was no guarantee it would be fine without Jon. His heart pounded, and he fixated on the front door. It gave away nothing of the situation behind it. Jon knew he had a tragedy on his hands, something he knew he wouldn’t be able to live with remembering and wondering what he could have done about it if he’d only tried.</p>
<p>Of course, there was no guarantee that Jon could do a thing about it, but with a final look at his register, a final accusation that shook him to action, Jon made a decision. There was no one to consult as Elias was in the building and whatever role Peter Lukas played in Jon’s life, it was too periphery to help him.</p>
<p>For a final moment, Jon willed the archivists to emerge. Then, he put his spontaneous little plan into action.</p>
<p>The paramedics began setting up medical tents, corralling staff in and testing the saliva and prodding the skin they came across. They went department by department, as methodical as Jon. People disappeared under grim tarpaulin structures, led by fluorescent spectral figures bearing implements and wearing visors that obscured the slightest hint of a face.</p>
<p>Jon didn’t like them. Their presence meant that whatever was happening in the Institute, whatever he’d evacuated the staff from, whatever the archivists were facing, it was truly horrific. And he didn’t have any of their gear to protect them.</p>
<p>As he was staring, he caught the attention of a pair of paramedics. They pointed to him and then to the nearest medical tent. Automatically, Jon began to follow. And then he squeezed the register, and the names written there seized him.</p>
<p>Rebellious was hardly the best word to describe Jon, and the thought of doing anything other than what he was told in a situation like this was frankly absurd. He liked to believe he was a rational man, and not the kind of person who takes the risks he was about to.</p>
<p>After a single step in the right direction, Jon turned on his heel and sprinted away, around to the back of the Institute. He knew the fire escape was open from the outside now that all the doors were unlocked, and he guessed that the paramedics would be slow in their heavy protective gear. He was right, and in the glass reflection, Jon caught sight of four paramedics lumbering towards him in their stiff rubber encasements. They were too far away to reach him before Jon reached the door, but there was still time to turn back, apologise, and head to the medicine tent.</p>
<p>But Jon steeled himself and ran on, throwing open the door and closing it behind him with a satisfying click. Because the situation looked more and serious with every new paramedic, and because it wouldn’t just turn out okay, and because beneath his stuffy demeaner and inability to take a joke, Jon liked Tim and Sasha and Martin, and he wouldn’t just let whatever this was happen to them. Because Elias had asked him how he was and meant it, and that didn’t happen many times to people like Jon.</p>
<p>That was enough for Jon. It was enough to have him run from the medics and into the kind of danger that requires biohazard suits.</p>
<p>He heard the paramedics yell behind him but the words were smothered by the alarm. They banged on the door and found they could not open it, a fact that unnerved Jon as that door should be able to open. It opened for him. The sound of the alarm brought him out of his nervous contemplation, and he resisted the urge to test whether the fire escape would still open from the inside as it was meant to. Jon had no intentions of leaving without the people he came for, so he decided he didn’t need to know precisely he reached the point of no return. This was it.</p>
<p>The paramedics did give him an idea though. He pulled his jumper over his nose, and Jon embarked on his search through the Institute.</p>
<p>Even though it was a fire alarm, Jon knew there was no fire. Though heavy and thick and rotten, there was not a hint of smoke in the air.</p>
<p>He didn’t know what he was up against, but he kept a sharp eye out for the danger he knew was there. The fire alarm was a constant thrumming howl, and it paced his panicked thoughts. His fear was an instrument and this sound was its conductor. It kept him moving. He peeked into the circular glass windows in the office doors, but they were steamed up and he saw nothing. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, and unconsciously he set his expectations for the archivists to appear where they always did. He wasn’t looking in the offices for them, so he kept moving.</p>
<p>He floated through the empty Institute like a ghost, and as if he were locking up at the end of the day, as if this was the final lap of his circular, Jon found himself at his front desk. As usual, the space looked strange when it was empty. He almost smiled at how often he’d seen it like this now, deserted and uncanny as all busy spaces look when stripped of the crowds they’re built to accommodate.</p>
<p>He saw the leather-bound log, and lifted it from the desk. It was important. He knew it was important.</p>
<p>Sasha saw Jon before he saw her. The sight was so horrifying it was laughable, just because he was the last person she expected to see standing in reception with the same stone-faced expression he always wore. Looking as anxious and disapproving as though he hadn’t run into a death trap.</p>
<p>‘Jon! Run!’ She barrelled into him, shaking him out of his helpless train of thought.</p>
<p>‘Sasha! You have to evacuate! Get out of here, I’ll find the others!’</p>
<p>She did a double take. ‘Are you kidding me?’</p>
<p>He shook his head wildly, and pointed to the door.</p>
<p>‘Go!’</p>
<p>It was a farce. She laughed, the sound unsettling against the piercing fire alarm and the foul smelling air and rising condensation. ‘If you won’t go-’</p>
<p>He made his decision in a second, and shook his head.</p>
<p>‘Then come with me!’ She took him by the wrist and sprinted.</p>
<p>Her grip was strong, and she was fast. Her tie streamed behind her, her shirt came untucked and rumpled, and she didn’t break a sweat. Jon stumbled behind her, losing his footing. He was a self-identified social smoker with no interest in exercise, and he didn’t know what he was running from. Perhaps if he did, he could at least go further before Sasha resorted to dragging him with her, but it was becoming apparent to them both that he could not keep up.</p>
<p>‘Where?’ Jon coughed. ‘Where are we-?’</p>
<p>‘We have to manually trigger the fire alarm.’</p>
<p>‘I think that bit’s already done!’ He snapped.</p>
<p>‘We need to release the CO2! It kills the worms.’ She said, as if that meant anything to Jon. ‘There’s no fire, so it hasn’t- and we need to-‘</p>
<p>‘Where are the others?’</p>
<p>Her face hardened.</p>
<p>‘Trapped in the archives. If we’re fast, maybe we can-‘</p>
<p>Ahead of them, the automatic glass doors in front of them began to close. Sasha went weak for a second; the sight of the slow closing doors sealing them in and resigning them to their fate almost drew out all her will to fight. But Sasha was not going to let them be closed in like that, not when she knew what was behind them.</p>
<p>So she dashed for it, running hard for a few intense seconds, and pulling Jon hard enough to hurt. Had he been alone, Jon would surely never have made it. With a yelp, Sasha pushed them both through into the next corridor.</p>
<p>The door shut behind them. As did the door in front of them, at the end of a stretch of corridor.</p>
<p>They leaned on each other for a moment, catching their breath. Jon was bent double, taking a few deep breaths like he learned in PE, which was probably the last time he sprinted. He looked up from the floor once the pain of his stitch dulled. Even the ground level of the Institute was a maze. All the automatic doors and identical offices looked so professional and uniform in daylight, but devoid of people, the effect was eerie.</p>
<p>‘What department is this?’ Jon asked, unwilling to admit he didn’t know where he was.</p>
<p>‘Research.’ She answered over her shoulder, looking for the manual system. ‘We’re near Artefact Storage though. Come on, we need to find the fire system. Elias said it was around here somewhere.’</p>
<p>Jon was watching the door they came through. He’d been glaring at it for malfunctioning. He expected it to open when he drew near, as it always did. He didn’t want to think about the locked fire escape, and what that might mean for any other door out of the Institute.</p>
<p>The doors were always finicky, he reassured himself, they were installed when such an invention was new and never seen to again. He stood there expectantly, and Sasha paced behind him. But he suddenly felt the weight of the retrospective knowledge that, in his rush to grab the evacuation plan, he had left his keycard on the front desk, where it was useless.</p>
<p>‘No, no no no no no-’ He muttered. He rested his head on the glass and resisted the urge to try and break through physically. He needed his strength, and he was so tired, and so scared, and it was so draining. So he stared down the corridor through the glass, keeping watch for Tim or Martin or Elias. Instead, he saw a worm.</p>
<p>He wasn’t phased by the sight of one anymore, however revolting the appearance of their squirming, pale bodies.</p>
<p>The carpet rippled. Jon looked closer, inching towards the glass in an attempt to see better.</p>
<p>Behind him, Sasha stopped pacing. She was looking too. Unheard by either of them, a tape recorder clicked on in Sasha’s blazer pocket.</p>
<p>He focused as intently as he could, but the light was dim and his glasses were coated with this revolting film. Leaning in as close as possible in an attempt to detect the source of the movement Jon could perceive in the dark, his nose touched the glass as he looked with all his strength.</p>
<p>The filth on his lenses did nothing to protect him from the sight of the thousands of worms oozing up from under the carpet like wet stains, or mould, or a hundred overlapping stains— he screamed.</p>
<p>‘<em>No!</em>’</p>
<p>Sasha screamed too.</p>
<p>The wave of worms that separated her from Elias had caught up to them. The glass would be no match for the tonnes of filth following her every step. In their fullness, the depth of worms was taller than Jon, and when the glass broke as it inevitably would, they’d be suffocated. If gnawing, burrowing, writhing bodies did not consume the very flesh of them first.</p>
<p>Jon turned around to Sasha, looking for something he could do, something he could say, something she might say to him.</p>
<p>She was right behind him. And to his horror, she was watching him. Her eyes glinted menacingly in the white LED emergency lights.</p>
<p>‘Do something!’ He yelled. What, he thought, would be the question of the century.</p>
<p>Her eyes were glazed over, and Jon took her shoulders in each hand and shook her.</p>
<p>‘I know, it’s really scary, I’m scared too, but please, Sasha, you have to stay focused.’ He looked at her, trying to stay calm for her. As far as he could see, she was disassociating. Jon had his back turned to the worms, he couldn’t look at them and hold back the horror Jon was pushing down.</p>
<p>Sasha’s gaze finally shifted, and she seemed to overcome her apparent paralysis. She cast her eyes around the room, nodding at Jon as she did, reassuring him that she was back, even if she couldn’t speak yet. She tried the glass door ahead of them, the one that was not blocked with worms. With no keycard, it would never work. The doors closing in on them was never meant to be part of the evacuation plan, it was just a malfunction that would be easily rectified by a keycard between two members of the Institute.</p>
<p>Jon hoped it would be. Perhaps their situation had no remedy, and the thought elicited a quiet whine in the back of his throat that drew Sasha’s new compulsion like blood in the water. Surreptitiously, she rested her attention on Jon once more, giving in to the instincts she now knew of, but did not yet understand.</p>
<p>The worms walled them in on one side, and Jon was waiting for them to finally overwhelm the glass holding them back, or to start pooling underneath the carpet in their segment of the Institute. Sasha hung back, and watched. Knowing about Jon seemed to clarify her mind, and she needed clarity, and strength, and power, and she knew how to achieve it. It might save both their lives, so it was worth it, and it felt right.</p>
<p>Jon beat back the feeling of being trapped, and tapped Sasha’s shoulder again, just to make sure she wasn’t going back under again.</p>
<p>‘Come on,’ he wasn’t sure whether he was trying to encourage her or whether he was pleading with her. He looked down the rest of the corridor, and he left Sasha where she was. Desperate, he stumbled the short run to it, and fell against the unyielding automatic door. He cried out against his clenched teeth and pounded his fists against the glass until they felt bruised. He turned around to look at her, and she was standing there, waiting.</p>
<p>He bit back the panic, tried struggling a little longer. He desperately searched the room for something he could use against the door, striding with the kind of purpose he wished he could direct against the door. He shattered a ceramic lamp against the glass, it didn’t make a scratch, and he knew his efforts were useless. He sunk against the clear, smooth, perfect glass and onto the floor. He looked up, and went cold.</p>
<p>Sasha stood directly in front of him, looking down on him, watching him suffer. With every second, she stood a little straighter, looked a little stronger. A faint smile played about her lips, and Jon’s eyes widened. He pressed into the glass trying to back away, but there was absolutely nowhere to go. She stopped smiling and just watched as Jon tried to breath shaky breaths under the weight of observation.</p>
<p>‘Sasha?’ He tried, in a quiet, questioning voice.</p>
<p>He needed air. He told her, and tried to back further into the glass.</p>
<p>She had to see what would happen so she stayed where she was, watching. Jon looked away from her brown eyes backlit with a green glow, to the worms rising above them. The glass held them back, and Jon knew there was nothing he could do against the glass behind him if floor-to-ceiling worms had been resisted for this long. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to escape more, but he knew beyond certainty that there was nothing he could do.</p>
<p>The glass creaked.</p>
<p>Jon shut his eyes and ducked his head into his knees. He was already on the floor, so curling into ball was only a short movement away. He disappointed himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything. Sasha loomed until her vision cleared again. When it did, the clarity was worth it. She was revolted with herself.</p>
<p>She shook her head and pushed her questions aside. She would save them. It was worth it. It had to be, it was done now.</p>
<p>She felt stronger and weaker and like she was stepping up and giving in to something she knew and something she worried she would never understand. She pushed it all aside, and she took Jon’s hands gently, and pulled him up.</p>
<p>‘Why did you… why would you do that…’ He began. He didn’t know what she did. He felt lightheaded, and somehow robbed, and the afterimage of her eyes burned into his retinas made him feel like she did something and that it was bad. He couldn’t phrase the question. He couldn’t put his finger on it, the words escaped him and the memory was fading in the face of the horror behind the glass behind Sasha. The glass moaned again.</p>
<p>She shook her head.</p>
<p>‘Oh Jon,’ she was choked.</p>
<p>The glass gave a truly threatening squeal, and they both whipped around to look once more.</p>
<p>‘No time to explain. But I’m sorry. Really, I am, but I know where we can go now! Artefact storage! Let’s go!’</p>
<p>He didn’t understand the connection, but he made a decision to trust her. He’d figure it out later. She promised she’d explain. They ran hand in hand, and she ran more surely and more quickly than before. They ran to a short distance to the middle of their segment of corridor, up to a dark wooden door Jon hadn’t noticed between one shut glass automatic door and the next.</p>
<p>He stood behind Sasha, and with great trepidation, she opened the door. It opened into a monstrous warehouse, and Jon blinked into the dark. The air was cold, and stale, and well ventilated. A chill emanated from the room, stirring against the damp air from the corridor.</p>
<p>They stood panting in the doorway, and Jon wondered where in the building this could possibly be. Somehow, the wide expanse lined with wire racks holding cardboard boxes didn’t seem to map onto the building. Jon wiped his glasses on his jumper and he still couldn’t see the back wall.</p>
<p>Sasha led them in, and cast a hard glance over the cavernous room.</p>
<p>‘God, I hate this place.’</p>
<p>Jon nodded.</p>
<p>‘I can see why.’</p>
<p>She looked at him, sensing a little camaraderie.</p>
<p>‘I was a researcher before I joined the archives. I had to analyse and investigate all the stuff in here. Take notes after sleeping in the rusted chair, write in the memory book, all that sort of thing. I transferred after three months.’</p>
<p>He nodded, and tried to look at the things that weren’t packed away in boxes, just to see what she was talking about. However, looking at any one artefact strained his eyes in unusual ways, so he stopped looking and kept his gaze to the floor. They walked in near silence, breaking only for a little commentary on a particular artefact Sasha had encountered, until she stopped, suddenly. When she spoke, she sounded distant and mild, as if totally distracted.</p>
<p>‘Oh, hey. I’ve found… I’ve found that table Tim was talking about. Don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Just a… basic… optical illusion. Nothing special… just… just a… wait…’</p>
<p>Jon knew that tone of voice, and he had no patience left in him. He frantically waved his hand in front of her face, breaking her connection with a table on the rack next to them. Jon glanced at it, and he saw a garish coffee table, one that would fail to catch more than his disdain in good circumstances, and only frustrated him to the point of hysteria now.</p>
<p>A vice squeezed around his mind. The lines wrapped around his vision, and he was invited, so very strongly, in a way that echoed something in the back of his mind that came closer to the surface every time he remembered it, he was asked politely to reconsider the table and its clever, pretty optical illusion.</p>
<p>Like a maths problem, Jon gave up on it immediately. The lines reordered themselves and once again and the table was just an unsightly and infuriating distraction. The vice loosened and Jon shouted</p>
<p>‘Sasha! For God’s sake! Those are lines! Just lines!’</p>
<p>She looked as though she were solving something complicated, or tracing the lines with her eyes. Jon looked again for a moment, and away again as if burned. The table looked like a migraine on wooden legs to Jon, and he was furious.</p>
<p>‘We have to find Martin and Tim! Come on!’</p>
<p>She pulled at her hair and groaned full of resentment. They both knew no one could waste a second, and Sasha could not stay focused.</p>
<p>‘Sorry, you’re right, let’s go-‘ she shook off the effect of the hypnotic table Tim had told her about.</p>
<p>Behind them, Jon could swear he heard a voice echoing her over and over again, ‘you’re right, let’s go’.</p>
<p>His heart skipped a beat, and he stumbled for a second.</p>
<p>‘you’re right, let’s go’.</p>
<p>‘Can you hear that too?’ He asked, quietly. He didn’t dare move. He inched his gaze over to her, and with one, dooming motion, Sasha nodded. The terror ripped through him like an electric shock, and for a moment he was stuck still once again. Then, he heard it, his own voice but as if it were played backwards and underwater, yet echoing his words and intonation exactly.</p>
<p>‘can you hear that too?’</p>
<p>The animalistic, instinctive, active response to the stimulus presented to him left Jon no room to fear. He was beyond emotion, and he almost kept up with her this time. They were running before they knew it, before they could agree or discuss, and this time he knew he was running for his life, and then some.</p>
<p>The sound chased them, breathing like them, just down their necks. Jon heard their footsteps behind them, as fast as Sasha’s, hitting the raw concrete floor with the same striking sound as they ran. They heard their own terror just behind them, and from each other, and the sound surrounded them, and followed them, and it was always, always, right behind them.</p>
<p>The rows of racks were a blur beside them, Sasha was a bullet dragging Jon forward and yet they seemed to get no further ahead. It was like running in a nightmare, but Jon didn’t dare falter or stop for a moment. His breathing was coming hard and fast, and he heard it in his ears right behind him.</p>
<p>Finally, <em>finally</em>, the something behind them fell away. Jon turned around to look, saw nothing, and crashed into the backwall.</p>
<p>They made it to the back of artefact storage, and it was a dead end.</p>
<p>Their own terrified breathing came from the darkness in front of them, their backs against the back wall, something echoing them in the dark ahead of them.</p>
<p>Sasha held Jon’s hand, and he squeezed.</p>
<p>‘It’s… it’s… Tim told me about it. He has this interest in things like that. It’s dangerous, Jon, but it can’t hurt us. Not yet. It’s tied to the table.’</p>
<p>She sighed, and rubbed her hands over her face, and her expression was determined when she looked back up, and faced the dark defiantly.</p>
<p>‘It reached the end of its leash!’ She yelled into the dark ahead of her. Jon cringed. The dark yelled back.</p>
<p>‘So we’re safe here.’</p>
<p>Jon relaxed for a moment. Then, familiar dread seeped back in.</p>
<p>‘But.. that means we can’t leave. It’s blocking the exit.’ He reasoned. As the adrenaline began to fail him, the despair began to set in.</p>
<p>Sasha sat down on the floor.</p>
<p>‘And if Elias finds the fire system, then…’</p>
<p>‘And if he doesn’t?’ Jon tried for optimistic, for both their sakes, but they both knew that when Sasha sadly said ‘worse,’ she was right.</p>
<p>He sat down with her.</p>
<p>‘worse. worse. worse.’ Said the thing that was not, the thing bound to the table.</p>
<p>The sound was maddening, and Jon put his head in his hands. Sasha put an arm around him, and Jon rested against her. The time passed as they listened to the three of them breathe.</p>
<p>‘Are we waiting to die?’ He asked, disbelieving. She flashed him a quick, brave smile.</p>
<p>‘Yeah, but weren’t we always?’</p>
<p>Jon sat up straighter, and looked at her. He didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t lead a dangerous life, he had no reason to agree with her, but here, at the end of his life for the third time this month, he didn’t have enough to prove her wrong.</p>
<p>‘It wasn’t even-‘ He began, resentment and regret pouring in as the thing in the dark in front of him mocked the words even as they left his mouth.</p>
<p>In the backwall, the dead end of the impossible warehouse, a door creaked open next to them.</p>
<p>Jon jumped out of his skin. Sasha jumped to her feet.</p>
<p>‘Need a door?’</p>
<p>‘Michael!’</p>
<p>Jon hated that name, he realised. Always had.</p>
<p>‘And you have someone else to repay me with, how perfect. Naomi will like company!’ He laughed, and Sasha’s smile died on her face.</p>
<p>‘company… company… company…’ The thing that was not in the dark repeated an impossible voice, the effect was like the exponential distortion of two recorders pressed together. Nothing was right, and it was all wrong. It felt like Jon’s head was filling with pressure and terror and he was trying to remember what these dots looked like when they were all joined up.</p>
<p>‘No.’</p>
<p>She began. Then she stopped, turned to Michael, and with rising horror in her voice at Michael’s quirked eyebrow and sardonic smile, she refused him again.</p>
<p>‘No! Jon’s not… he saved my life too, no! That’s not fair.’</p>
<p>Jon pulled her back  from the darkness concealing the mimic. He didn’t know what would happen if she drifted within its range, but he didn’t want to know. Absentmindedly, she drew closer to Jon and Michael than the darkness and the mimic.</p>
<p>The Distortion laughed and the mimic laughed with him, too. Jon’s nose started to bleed, and beyond pressing his hand to it and observing the flow, no one paid any attention. Sasha started to pace, and pulled her hands through her hair again.</p>
<p>‘You’ll die here, archivist, if you don’t take the chance I’m giving you. Really, how is he different to Naomi? If you can justify her, then can’t you-‘</p>
<p>‘Because I like Jon!’</p>
<p>She said it fiercely and protectively, and Jon felt warm and shocked at once. His jaw slackened a bit, and the blood cobwebbed on his knuckles.</p>
<p>Michael leaned casually against his doorway, and crossed one leg over another and folded it under another. He made Jon’s eyes hurt in the same way the table did.</p>
<p>‘Does that make a difference, really-‘</p>
<p>‘Yes, to me! It’s subjective and meaningless and arbitrary, and I’ll owe you one later, if that’s what it takes.’</p>
<p>He giggled, then he began to laugh. He seemed to accept the trade-off though, and the edges of Jon’s consciousness were breaking down. He assumed Elias had found the fire system. He assumed this was all a horrible hallucination, or that he was dead and in hell.</p>
<p>Then Sasha pulled him through the door in the dead end.</p>
<p>Jon’s eyes were open, and he couldn’t see. He was blind here. He couldn’t see the fractals spiralling out from their footsteps like veins, or the corridor repeating endlessly, itself a fractal. He saw the darkness of his own closed eyes, though they were wide open, and heard the door click behind him like the fire escape.</p>
<p>He whined and put his hands forward, completely unable to internalise or process or visualise what he could see. Sasha held one of Jon’s outstretched hands and put it down by his side. Jon focused on the only sensory information he could accept, the physicality of the interlocked fingers. He could recognise himself by what he wasn’t, and the universe narrowed down to a pair of held hands.</p>
<p>‘Don’t look, I’ll lead you.’ She said it softly, and Jon nodded. He couldn’t figure out which direction words were meant to come out of.</p>
<p>He kept his eyes tightly shut, and Sasha led. He felt better in the dark knowing it was meant to be that way, as his eyes were shut, so there was less wrong. The pressure was killing him, and he put each foot in front of the other with a limited understanding of what direction forward was, or where each of his feet were, or what surface they landed on, or how his feet corresponded with the rest of his body; but, this was better because the dark was a choice he made by shutting his eyes, and he was not being eaten by worms or a mimic mocking him with his own dying breaths.</p>
<p>‘This is pretty straightforward,’ Sasha whispered. ‘I think he’s letting us figure out where to go next.’</p>
<p>‘What part of this is straightforward?’ Jon hissed indignantly, figuring out this reality he found himself in.</p>
<p>Sasha hushed him as the distorted remains of Naomi crossed an intersecting corridor. She gripped Jon’s hand tightly, and pressed a hand over his mouth. Sasha did not want Naomi to see them, not when she was stretched out agonizingly and lumbering aimlessly through the splintering corridors. If Jon heard her undead wail, the unrecognised song of the buried, he didn’t react. Perhaps it was just more information he couldn’t receive, perhaps he simply couldn’t distinguish the sound from any other moan or wail or from the static filling the corridor.</p>
<p>Naomi dragged her ruined features and extended limbs in the opposite direction to Sasha and Jon. While letting Jon go, Sasha internally apologised.</p>
<p>She didn’t know. She made the mistake of believing.</p>
<p>Watching Naomi take one shuffling step after another, in the wrong direction, hopefully, Sasha knew she was wrong. She couldn't side with monsters after this. She would never defend one or trust one again.</p>
<p>She hadn’t yet realised that she had made the same mistake twice. When they came to a yellow door on the other side of the infinite corridor, Sasha imagined the look on their faces if it opened up straight into the infested archives.</p>
<p>Then she didn’t have to imagine.</p>
<p>Jon received the gift of sight just in time to see the door open straight down onto a pit that writhed, and he screamed. Sasha looked at him for a fraction of a second before he fell, and she felt so alive. Her heart thumped. She clung to the doorframe, and tried to hold on to his hand. The look on Jon’s face was to die for, and Sasha knew she likely would, if she was not lucky. </p>
<p>She was extremely lucky. Jon, however, fell through her grasp like a penny into a cold, dark, well.</p>
<p>Sasha did not hesitate, or wait for a moment. Before he could look up and face her, she was already running back through the corridor.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Host</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>CW: themes and motifs echoing sexual abuse; concerning bodily autonomy and bodily integrity. Torture, GRAPHIC descriptions of violence, echoes of real world violence. Skip to the end notes for a chapter summery!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The archives were a nightmare. A horrible nightmare that Jon immediately understood he would never, ever wake up from. His vision sindwinded with the squirming worms and the door shut above him. For a second, he saw Sasha’s terrified face in the doorway, before she turned and ran in a direction that didn’t make sense; vertically upwards. More importantly, she ran away from Jon, who lay on the floor and reached up towards her fleeing figure. His vision followed her, tracing up his own arm and he was left alone with the worms crawling up him. Jon was transfixed for a minute and he even saw some strange beauty in their pale, glistening forms and unified undulation. Until every single one of them tore into him at once. His cry was shaky and uncertain, like he was torn between the pain and the confusion.</p><p>He cast his eyes up for Sasha. The ceiling remained solid and bare, devoid of doors, and Jon forgot what he was looking for. He did not forget who.</p><p>Sensation shot through him like electricity, carrying  the knowledge of the invasion under his skin, already there and only sinking deeper into him. He brushed his arms and face with the flats of his palms, becoming more frantic with every second as he felt his very flesh turn with the worms’ squirming. He realised he was screaming through gritted teeth, powerless to do more than lie there and cry out with mounting pain, emanating outwards like the heat of a fever.</p><p>He didn’t remember passing out. He just remembered crying, perhaps internally by the end, for Sasha to <em>please come back</em>. He remembered that she did not. He would never forget that she did not come back through the strange door in the ceiling that he fell through.</p><p>When the carbon monoxide fell on him and all the worms in the Institute, Jon was already completely unconscious. Hundreds of thousands of them stilled, died against him, leaving only the few worms living beneath his skin and Jon’s own shallow breaths to disturb the archive’s first and only moment of total peace.</p><p> </p><p>From his safe, top floor office, Elias considered things carefully. He sat at his desk, apparently oblivious to the wailing alarms and the terrified disorientation from his, standing behind the desk like employees with a grievance.</p><p>He leaned back and steepled his fingers, resting his elbows on the table.</p><p>This was the moment they could figure out exactly what he knew. With three against one, if they worked together as they had been since they’d begun this journey, they’d have him. They could rend the knowledge from his mind like wolves could tear flesh from bones.</p><p>But Sasha was crying. She’d crashed through a door connecting to an exterior wall with one thing on her mind; her guilt, and the knowledge that if she did not save Jonathon Sims he would haunt her for the rest of her life. Martin and Tim had been at lunch, together, in the café down the street. So they missed the mysterious larval bloom that enveloped the Institute during lunch break. But as soon as they heard, they’d come straight to Elias’ office. It wasn’t even that they suspected his involvement. They just believed Elias could help.</p><p>That could change, Elias reminded himself. Together, the three of them could discover him, see him for what he really was.</p><p>But Martin was in a state, he was trying to sooth Sasha though there was no sign of her crying subsiding any time soon.</p><p>Tim, however, concentrated. He could see through Elias, if only he knew to look.</p><p>Elias bet that he wouldn’t, and hoped for the best.</p><p>‘I thought the Institute was evacuated?’ Elias asked, as if weary and terrified like he ought to be. ‘If there’s anyone still in there, then-‘</p><p>‘Jon.’ Sasha began. ‘We have to go, now-‘</p><p>‘Where?’ Asked Martin, never hesitating to help someone in need.</p><p>‘The archives?’ Tim muttered, miserably. Sasha nodded, trying to hold back the tears.  ‘Can we even get to him in time?’</p><p>They weren’t even squabbling. By all accounts, this was cooperation, and it distracted them as surely as any divide. And beholding filled any cracks in their friendship. They were a synchronised unit driving inexorably into Elias’ hands. They may be more powerful than when they started the job, but not one of them knew better.</p><p>Elias relaxed, and outwardly hardened the face that was smiling within. Besotted with the cheap tricks he could now achieve, Tim may never truly use his power. May he always be so beholden to beholding.</p><p>The archivists made up their minds. ‘I’m not leaving him twice.’ Sasha resolved. And Tim and Martin weren’t leaving her.</p><p>They all stuck together, and Elias truly hoped they’d stay that way. Stuck, that is.</p><p>‘Do what you have to do, but please… be safe. I hope to see the four of you outside, in front of the Institute. There’ll be medics there, and we can discuss the next steps together.’ Elias sounded brave, and they nodded, before they dashed off. So enthusiastic, so humanly desperate to save someone with more humanity than the three of them combined, now.</p><p>They knew so much more than Elias might have wanted them to, but they understood so very, very little.</p><p>As they sprinted away like sweet, misguided rescue animals, Elias took a stroll through the Institute. He created this, all this, every brick a testament to human agony, every desk a place to document it, transcribe it, bring it to life and relish it. The whole building just a reference to the fear felt by the whole world over.</p><p>He could make it more than a reference. He could make his sign <em>into </em>what it represented. Turn image into the thing itself. He could take all these fears described here, and make them manifest.</p><p>He just needed to know what he was working with, exactly. And what an opportunity for a quick assessment.</p><p>He sat on the Institute steps, smoked and stubbed out a cigarette, and flicked the butt away quickly. Elias could not afford to be caught relaxing, so knitted his fingers together and picked at them anxiously before the archivists returned triumphantly with Jon’s ruined body carried between the three of them. Sasha and Martin held him up in a two-person carry, and Tim picked up his legs and guided them all out.</p><p>Elias peered at them, and thought of how efficiently they worked as a team. He appraised Jon’s body and realised with some surprise that there was hope for him yet. It was not without a modicum of bitterness that Elias knew there were fourteen worms currently burying into Jon, and that all would have to be extracted to prevent the further corruption of Jon’s body. Elias knew of one extremely painless method that he would have used should he have become infected. It would be easy to compel the worms to turn, exit the flesh the same way they entered.</p><p>He amplified the thought, gave the archivists the best possible chance to pick up on this plan. They gently laid Jon’s body out on the steps, and Tim was about to get the attention of the nearest medical team when Elias stopped him, all wide eyes and urgency.</p><p>‘The worms aren’t of this world, Tim. There’s not an x-ray or blood test on this earth that will test positive for them. Jon’s life depends on you, now.’ He sounded so grave, so convincingly appalled by the circumstances he’d carefully curated and the coincidences he happily capitalised on, that Tim stopped in his tracks and swore under his breath.</p><p>Then, even as Elias thought of all the ways he was responsible for this horrific situation, Tim looked lost and asked him the question Elias wouldn’t have dared dream he’d hear.</p><p>‘What do we do, then?’  </p><p>The other two turned from Jon to Elias, eager for an answer, perhaps more eager for that than the plan.</p><p>It seemed that none of their attention was on Elias’ mind. They must trust him, he thought with some warmth. The satisfaction of success was beginning to burn within him, but he quelled it. He had to focus.</p><p>‘Martin,’ Elias began, and Martin startled at his own name. ‘I believe you have a contingency plan in mind? Is that right?’</p><p>He nodded his head, but he hesitated. Under the pressure of a raised eyebrow from Elias, Martin reached under his cardigan, and pulled a corkscrew from the waistband of his pastel corduroys.</p><p>Tim stepped away, looked from the corkscrew to Sasha and back. ‘In what way, shape, or form, is that a plan?’</p><p>Elias sat on the step next to Jon, and shifted him up into his lap, propping his head up and resting his knees on Jon’s back. Martin fished in his pockets for some anti-bacterial, and rubbed the liquid over the sharp, now shining, instrument.</p><p>‘Why do you have this?’ Sasha asked, wondering when her life had taken these turns.</p><p>‘Its… you know, it’s for pulling the worms out of people. I- I- I used to carry around a knife, but I started thinking that, well, cutting into someone laterally wasn’t really the most efficient way to get them out, and besides which, they seem to be quite slow burrowing in a straight line so, given their size, th-the corkscrew just seemed to be the better option.’</p><p>The ebb and flow of knowledge rendered Martin excited and self-conscious by turns. Sasha and Tim were drawn in and revolted as they too fell to and pulled away from the burning curiosity now inherent to the four of them. Between the two modes the archivists always found themselves inhabiting, between rapturous fascination and total abjection, the needle swung closer to the latter and it showed on their faces.</p><p>‘Why-?’ Tim begun, and Martin, defensive and feeling caught, interrupted.</p><p>‘Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay. I didn’t! I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to do when… well, y’know, this happens. I just… didn’t think it would happen to… he’s just a bystander. He’s not-’</p><p>He had to stop himself. It was too much. Martin took a deep breath through a choked throat, and admitted something.</p><p>‘I can’t do this.’ He put the corkscrew in Elias’ hands.</p><p>Elias was about to intervene, when Tim put a hand on Martin’s, and squeezed gently. He was still holding Sasha’s hand too, and it was remarkable the kind of impact a little comfort could have on a resolve. Tim shattered Martin’s like a meteor through glass.</p><p>‘Come on, we… we have to help. Otherwise-‘</p><p>Sasha broke down, remembering what became of Timothy Hodges, remembering the awful way she’d helped him in his last moments. She was so deeply burdened and yet so faintly marked.</p><p>Martin was pulled in by the need to discover what exactly the worms did under the skin of a human being, but he was ruled by the stronger need to wipe away the tears, by the gentle tug on his hand. And Elias didn’t have to lift a finger. All he ever had to do was align those two needs, to satisfy them at once.</p><p>He was reminded of the behaviour of crabs when trapped in a bucket. They would pull any rising or escaping crab down to the depths, and none would escape. Those reports, modern parables, so quick to curse the crab and its selfish tendencies failed to condemn the researcher who deliberately, with full voyeuristic intent, placed each crab into the bucket. And today, Elias was that researcher, and the archivists performed spectacularly.</p><p>Jon was beginning to stir.</p><p>He heard that it was going to be okay. The words were not directed at him, but he didn’t know that. He wanted to curl in on himself and live in the words.</p><p>He needed to protect himself; his hands were by limp by his side, useless, and he knew there was something he had to push away, to keep off his skin. It was already beginning to slip away. He couldn’t quite recall what he flinched from, what he batted away with his hands, what exactly had died with a single unearthly scream.</p><p>But Jon didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to remember. Not when Elias leant over him, and hushed him. He only had to make the sound, ‘shh’, and the building whine died in Jon’s throat. As he quietened, the pressure of pain went unvoiced and completely unresolved, and began to build beyond the pain itself. Jon started to squirm.</p><p>‘What did you just do to him?’ Asked Tim, finally unnerved. Elias knew all of Tim’s sharp edges were whetted on fear and fear alone. Yet, Elias sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose the same way he did in overrunning meetings. Keeping up appearances would be more important than ever, from now. The familiarity was soothing, that much he knew.</p><p>‘There is an extensive vocabulary we can learn, but for now? I compelled him.’</p><p>The silence was punctured only by Jon’s laboured breathing. Tim accepted it. He nodded.</p><p>‘Why?’ Sasha’s voice was raw.</p><p>‘You need to focus, you don’t need to hear from him right now.’</p><p>‘No it, it makes sense. We… we can’t get distracted right now.’</p><p>‘Just open your mind,’ Elias murmured to Tim. ‘And trust your judgement.’</p><p>Tim nodded, grave, determined, brave, and so desperately misguided. He opened his eyes.</p><p>He had not closed them. He opened them again, and again, and again.</p><p>Jon’s body was a cross section, and he could see the fourteen worms in their different locations in the body, like a diagram or a map. He could not see a human among the rich colours of lay lines and contours that made up the interior of a person.</p><p>‘Anyone have a pen?’ Tim asked, distantly, absorbed in the beauty and the answers he could finally see.</p><p>Dumbly, Sasha passed him a ball point clipped onto her pocket, and with his free hand, Tim drew crosses on each site of infection, over the clothes as he could not see them and the worms at the same time. He was not ambidextrous either. At least, he didn’t used to be.</p><p>He stepped back to admire his work and his power before he realised that each of those crosses would be messy, and bloody, and painful. There was one just beneath Jon’s eye, on the fragile tissue connecting the socket to the cheekbone. Jon had flinched as the ballpoint pen had grazed too deeply. Elias had begged him to keep still, and Jon had been corpselike from then.</p><p>‘No, don’t move, you’ll only hurt yourself.’ Elias had said. But all five of them knew that Jon wouldn’t be hurting <em>himself</em>, and they knew his stillness and his silence was not acceptance.</p><p>‘Is there anything we can get him? Like, a painkiller, something-‘</p><p>Elias rolled his shoulders in a shrug. ‘Depends on how much progress the worms have made. Is there time for a painkiller to take effect before the worms bury too deeply?’</p><p>Elias knew there wasn’t. He gambled on Tim’s knowledge though. Left too late, and Jon would die—if only because Elias would kill him himself if the Corruption got out of hand beyond this little exercise.</p><p>Tim nervously passed the corkscrew from one hand to the other, before settling on his answer.</p><p>‘They’ll get him something in hospital. And he’ll only make it to hospital if we… It’s for the best.’</p><p>The archivists made their decision, and Jon wanted to argue against it. He watched films, he knew what it meant when someone started to draw marks on skin and talk like that. He couldn’t see the implement they’d use, no one had shown it to him or waved it carelessly into his tightly restricted field of vision, but Jon had seen the flash of metal in the pale afternoon sun. He knew they had just made a choice for him about what was best for him. And he couldn’t voice his own desires because Elias had hushed him and that seemed to quell every word in his throat, even if it did nothing for the building inner dialogue that remained unvoiced, even if all that was left unsaid would not go unthought.</p><p>There was agreement from everyone, excluding Jon, about what should be done. But who would start? Who would begin the awful ordeal?</p><p>The responsibility fell on Tim. Elias saw the corkscrew glint in Tim’s double handed grip, like a sacrificial knife. He balanced the tip of the corkscrew against the cross marked on Jon’s torso, drawn on the soft skin between the bottom of his ribcage and his hipbone. Elias hoisted Jon up, holding him close to his chest wrapped him in his arms and braced him for the first extraction.</p><p>Jon began to breathe out, unable to hold his breath, completely unable to control the even rhythm of inhale and exhale, and Tim struck.</p><p>The pain soared through Jon, spiralling out from the point where Tim made the incision, and into Tim’s own expanded perceptions. Tim voiced the pain Jon couldn’t. He gasped, and pressed a hand to the spot on his own body. In Jon’s body, the muscles were relaxed and completely defenceless, unable to tense. Because Elias told him not to move, that he’d only hurt himself. The message was received even by his nervous system, on the cellular level.</p><p>The pain bloomed between Tim and Jon like the first flames of a forest fire, and Tim gritted his teeth. Jon was totally relaxed, though he <em>wanted </em>to thrash away and remove the agonizing intrusion by any means possible. He breathed regularly and evenly and longed to return the violence Tim was inflicting upon him.</p><p>‘Careful, Tim.’ Elias hissed. He gripped Jon hard enough to hurt, if Jon could think or feel beyond the agonizing cut in his abdomen. ‘The intestines are rather important. There’s no point putting Jon through hell just to kill him with your carelessness.’</p><p>Anger edged into his voice, and Elias had to bite it back. Tim hung his head, mumbled a wordless apology.</p><p>‘Don’t apologise to me, it’s not my life in your hands.’</p><p>Tim could not bring himself to apologise to Jon. That would mean acknowledging the kind of monumental choice he had made for another human being. Instead, he turned the corkscrew in the opposite direction, finally pulling out an intact worm, and Jon remained outwardly calm. His body was relaxed and his heartbeat thundered in his ribcage like a prey animal’s.</p><p>Elias hummed his cool approval, and Tim bolted.</p><p>Outside of Jon’s hopelessly limited field of vision, Tim collapsed and threw up. It was too much. It was all far, far too much. Jon could hear crying, the indistinct sound of sorrow and terror rising like thick smoke. It was gratifying to experience some sign of Tim’s exterior breaking down, to know that he was not the only one suffering.</p><p>Martin drew himself up to chase after Tim, but then he thought again. He knew Tim would be back. He’d have to be. But there was work to be done, they’d agreed, and there was limited time. Only Tim seemed to know exactly how limited, but if every second counted, then Martin knew how to prioritise. Tim would be fine. Jon, however, was in trouble.</p><p>‘Hi,’ he began, and rubbed antibacterial gel on his hands. It was like looking after his mother. She never responded or reacted to anything he did, and yet he was always as kind as he could be. He tried to access the mindset he occupied when he fed her, and she let the food drop out of her open mouth. ‘I’m so sorry about all of this.’</p><p>He picked up the corkscrew from the floor where Tim dropped it and ran. He sanitised that too.</p><p>‘I know it doesn’t exactly make much sense, but I promise it’s going to be okay.’</p><p>He spoke under his breath, mostly to Jon, and looked for an easy extraction point. It was selfish, but as far as Martin was concerned, he was only filling in for a moment while Tim caught his breath. He calmed his shaking hands with the absurd idea that this was all just another chore on the list. He looked into Jon’s listless eyes, and felt at home.</p><p>Home was a cold place full of chores and work, and Martin could do this. He promised Jon again that it would all be okay, and Jon did not react. Martin picked the cross Tim left on Jon’s white sleeve, just under the inside of his elbow. He rolled Jon’s tattered sleeve up his wrist and felt for his pulse. It was faint, but present, and fast. The skin was soft there, and Martin could not see any sign of disruption. But he knew it was there.</p><p>‘Open your mind, you said?’ He asked Elias, who was clutching Jon like he was something precious.</p><p>When Elias nodded, and Martin accepted his role and apologised profusely and softly. Jon only felt dread.</p><p>Jon tried to hold onto nothing but the warmth he felt in the arms holding him up. It was not without bitterness that Jon realised he could try to focus on something so intensely while hurting so badly that it made no difference. Hate and fear and pain could numb out all the love and hope in the universe, and he could no longer feel the hand in his or the arms around him.</p><p>He wanted to scoot back and crawl away, even if it was just to die somewhere, on his own terms. The chest he was pressed up against, the shoulder his head was leaned against, these were only the prison that contained him and nothing more.</p><p>Then, when Martin pushed the corkscrew’s point into his limp arm, Jon knew that every word of comfort he uttered was a lie or such an oversimplification that Jon wanted to call him a bullshit liar to his face. And he wanted to hit him when he also spoke over his stuck body and told Sasha he was doing fine. It wasn’t fine. It wasn’t fine specifically because he couldn’t voice that fact.</p><p>He wanted to ask what was going on. He wanted them to look away. He looked for Elias, and realised he was right there. It was in his lap that he was stuck like an insect on fly paper.</p><p>He could see Elias, but he couldn’t see his face. He could see his coat sleeves and hands as he gestured to the archivists, the underside of his jaw and his collared shirt. He saw fragments, and heard the words, but those were as much Elias as the emails he received from the man who conducted the meetings and agreed with whatever came up and changed nothing.</p><p>He wasn’t sure whether or not that was Elias, but he knew that’s not who he went back for.</p><p>Martin could feel the stinging, all-consuming pain in his arm, a copy of the injury he was doing Jon. Jon’s breathing did not turn ragged, like Martin’s, but both pairs of eyes began to fill. It hurt more than Martin could have imagined, and in a strange way, he was glad he didn’t have to. This insight felt more like empathy than the sick voyeurism that he was beginning to grow accustomed to.</p><p>Tim appeared behind Martin, and wiped his face of the wetness with both of his soft, careful hands. Martin didn’t break concentration, bent over the bleeding wound he was creating in Jon’s arm.</p><p>‘How much further?’ He pushed the question through his choked voice. There was so much he couldn’t see as well as Tim could. This was nothing like anything Martin had done before, no matter how he tried to construct the parallel, no matter how he tried to convince himself that this was okay.</p><p>‘Just keep going. Not long now though.’</p><p>Martin sighed, and nodded. Every second was torture. Blood spilled onto Elias, who held Jon’s other hand. Jon’s head lolled onto Elias’ shoulder, and he looked up into the sky. The tears in his eyes spilled over, down his temples and into his hair.</p><p>‘You’ve got it- other direction now.’ Tim instructed, but his voice shook. He kept watch on the situation. It was strange, he thought, but he’d always done this. These instincts were at once alien to Tim, but they had always been his. Hadn’t he always wanted to see this supernatural reality, see what had happened to his brother, understand it, and make it pay?</p><p>When Martin finally pulled out the worm, it was forgivable that the four disciples of the Eye leaned in to look at it. It died instantly, and then it was an abject thing to be discarded. Martin plucked it from the end of the corkscrew where it was lanced, and threw it as far as he could. He leaned back against Tim, who crossed his arms protectively around Martin’s chest, a mirror image of Jon and Elias.</p><p>‘Okay, two down. Twelve to go.’</p><p>Jon’s pain radiated out from those two wounds. It and bled into every inch of the rest of his body. And the people he suffered it for simply sat back and watched and tallied it off like targets hit. He hated them, in that moment. He hated them all very, very much. And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.</p><p>He couldn’t even twitch as the now familiar point rested on the mark just under his eye. His heart began to race and his head spun when he realised that the most he could do was retreat into happier thoughts.</p><p>Like a bad cassette, he was stuck on one memory. Sat in this spot, in such a similar position, achingly close to that same kiss so many weeks ago, Jon could only think of that moment he leaned in and closed the space between himself and Elias. Just as he had then, Elias ran his hands through his hair. This time, it was to keep the strands from obscuring his face. Jon rolled his eyes up to the clouds on command, allowing for more space to work. He couldn’t see anything but the pale, overcast sky, and Jon was free from looking at anything or anyone. He was free to imagine even as the pain bore in.</p><p>He’d been kissed here, once. On this spot in front of the Institute, and on the same skin destroyed by the corkscrew. A cheek kiss that strayed from its target in the passion of the moment, the excitement of discovery. How many memories could share a space, how many memories could he hold? Jon could cry at the thought, but he thought of it anyway to keep the pain at bay, to outpace it. The kisses conjured by memory would be his escape, and through them, he would be free.</p><p>He was not as free as he thought. He could see the Elias’ rings glinting in the weak sun, he could see Elias’ fingers wrapped around the wooden handle as it bobbed in and out of Jon’s rigidly set perspective. The image was ice poured through his body, and it shattered his sweet imagination.</p><p>He thought it was Tim. How could it be Elias?</p><p>He knew they were Elias’ rings, that this was Elias’ hand. At the bar, he watched with drunken appreciation when Elias drummed his fingers on the glass, when the metal band touched the glass and sang, when the sharp stone grazed Jon’s collarbone as Elias slipped his jumper over his head and kissed him.</p><p>The sky was a dreary grey and overlaid on top of it was the moment Elias earned his trust. It had happened on this very spot, at a different time of day, in a different lifetime where this pain was not possible and where smiling and kissing and love in-potentia existed. He’d given up his worst secrets, the dreams he’d let go of, and everything he never thought he’d say aloud. His skin was torn apart on the same spot, and Jon did not understand how there could possibly be this many ways of being open with someone.</p><p>Jon finally understood that he knew nothing, then. He didn’t know who was hurting him and who was holding him. He didn’t understand why his friends he went back for were doing such things to him, and he didn’t know why they couldn’t just ask him if he even wanted to be saved. He supposed, though, he never asked them if they wanted him to rescue them from the Institute.</p><p>The tears fell in earnest, sliding from his hair and soaking into Elias’ suit jacket. It hurt. Jon was hurt in every way a person could possibly hurt. The world was darkening, and Jon wondered whether he always had been in the dark because he had trusted Elias for the sake of a kiss and the facsimile of a real conversation. It had to be a cheap imitation of one, because anyone with a heart, anyone who cared, would surely rather kill him than put him through this.</p><p>Elias gently wiped his eyes with the tips of his fingers, granting Jon the clarity he’d spent a lifetime avoiding. He preferred to drown his sight in tears as they at least obfuscated the world he lived in. He stared at the rings and he couldn’t see the man and he didn’t know who it was he really remembered anymore. If he really existed, if it really happened, or whether it was all some pleasant story he made up to distract from the agony at hand.</p><p>They freed the worm from his skin, and didn’t stop for a minute before extracting yet another.</p><p>Elias’ rings were the last thing Jon saw before Elias left his hands covering Jon’s eyes. It was as if he understood that Jon couldn’t possibly bear to be present for this ordeal, as if he understood that Jon had already suffered enough without witnessing it all. The dark was warm, Elias’s thumbs traced spirals on Jon’s cheeks, and it still hurt, the pain was acute and emanating from a space between two ribs now, but Jon was just a little less tethered to his hurting body now.</p><p>Jon gave up on trying to figure out who was responsible for each extraction. He knew they were all to blame.</p><p>And there wasn’t a single sweet memory or softer mental space to escape into. His rage went undirected, his pain was smothered as surely as if by a hand clamped over his mouth. He wanted to snarl, to scream, and he was sure that if he ever had the opportunity again, he would never stop screaming just to show the world he could. Jon promised himself he would never let it happen to him again, and it was those thoughts of freedom and defence that he cocooned himself in, as the corkscrew freed him of the threat posed by the worms, and showed him over and over again what people and trust and love could do to him.</p><p>Despite it all, he relished the hands on his cheeks even as he blamed them.</p><p>And then it was over and all five of them breathed out. Jon’s regular inhalation and exhalation occurred in time to their sigh of relief, and he hated it because he was still separate from them, and because he felt nothing like their sense of sick achievement.</p><p>Jon was finally unmoored from consciousness, and he gladly drifted out into the darkness of rest.</p><p>
  <em>Somewhere else, in the real world, his body was still being punctured like a pincushion. Like an alarm clock slept through, he could hear crying and talking and pleading for reassurance and receiving it like balm. It was not for him, and he knew it. It was never for him. No one ever told him it was okay, or promised him he was fine, loved, adored, or even liked.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He forgot about the sounds, and focused on what he could see. He stood outside a house. He recognised this house as if it were his own, though he never lived here. This was the house he had always drawn, and unlike the house he’d grown up in, this house stood alone. Lone and level fields stretched out as far as he could see. It was a big house, square, with a triangular roof and four windows on the face. There was a path leading up to the open bright red door. The windows were closed and the crosses on the panes of glass were quaint and old fashioned.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He supposed he picked up the image of the house from storybook illustrations, or old cartoons. There was one storybook he read that was, he supposed, particularly influential, but he didn’t think about it too hard, though the thought snagged against his mind and unravelled around his consciousness like yarn. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The house was getting closer. He was walking towards the door.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He had to find a bed. Somewhere to lie down and rest as he should. He was walking towards the house. He was already walking that way anyway. This house was always there for him. He didn’t have to knock. Unlike the windows, the door was always open. When he was a child, he always drew the windows of houses shut, just as he always drew the doors open and the suns in the corners and the path in the middle of the page. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It must be from a storybook. Something nice. But he didn’t want to remember. Perhaps he’d never been nostalgic, but now he knew he was avoiding the memory that informed this pretty little cottage. Jon squinted at the house, his gaze flicking from the open door to the shut windows, and the knowledge resurfaced like something drowned floating up. Slowly. He hesitated, but continued on. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The house grew closer. He must have been distracted, picked up speed even as he attempted to slow his pace. He tried harder this time. He looked at the house and remembered it was not his. That didn’t matter. It belonged to him, or he to it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In his real house, the windows had been painted shut by careless occupants long ago. His grandmother never wanted to have them opened, and Jon grew up accepting that windows were meant to be closed from the inside. The cracked off-white paint kept the draft out, his grandmother claimed. Kept the inside in, the outside out. Jon had thought it funny then that the door was open, if it was so important to keep the outside out. He didn’t see why it should even stay that way. He liked being outside. Perhaps more than he liked being inside. Perhaps that was why his grandmother was so eager to lock him in. Because otherwise, she would lock him out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He rejected the contradiction as irrational, and yet it was reflected in his childhood drawing, and then in his lifelong dreams. It didn’t matter whether he agreed or not. The windows were painted shut, so he drew them that way too, no matter what. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He walked into the house easily, forgetting his desire to turn and run. The outside was now in. He forgot everything that was wrong, lost any lingering sense of unease. He was safe in the house. He tried to close the door behind him, but it swung open anyway. Jon struggled with it for a moment, but it was cool inside, and dark, and soporific. The house smelled of home, and he smiled. He longed to sleep. He walked upstairs and the door remained ajar. He could sleep soundly in the house, but never safely.</em>
</p><p>
  
  <em>Because the truth was, Jon could imagine the windows shut, even sealed closed with paint, or he could draw the curtains drawn against the world, but that meant nothing when the door was always open.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>His ignorance would never save him, but he couldn’t change what he couldn’t even question. He didn’t even recognise the house as belonging to Mr. Spider, the open door as the one that swallowed the teenager who saved his life, the one Jon still saw in missing posters papering Bournemouth like postcards. If he couldn’t see that, how could he question the smaller habits, the slighter tendencies towards blissful rationality.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>In his dream, he found a bed and laid down in it. </em>
</p><p>His head touched the pillow, and then he opened his eyes in hospital.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Jon gets full of worms, the archive gang pull em all out with a corkscrew- they're all complicit but they believe this is the only way, Elias knows there's WAY less painful methods but wants to find out how much the archive gang know, how much they can learn, and how much they trust him. The answer- they trust him as a mentor, they know more than cannon!jon, they understand significantly less about how their world works tho.</p><p>Jon passes out and dreams about a house he used to draw. It's a nice house. A quaint old fashioned cottage like what most children draw. He remembers that in his real house, the windows were always painted over to keep the draft out, but the door still let it in anyway. In the dream, the windows are still painted shut, drawn the way Jon remembers, but the door is always open- he is not safe, but he believes he is anyway. In his dream, he gets into bed and sleeps. When his head touches the pillow, he wakes up in hospital.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Emergency Contact</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>cw: gaslighting, unreality</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He flexed his fingers.</p><p>Hesitantly, he tested his fingers for motor function by pressing each one into the mattress. It hurt to do so, but the fact he could gave him cause for relief. He panted and let the pain subside before he steeled himself and tried again with his toes. He pushed his face into what he remembered was a smile, but that hurt too, so he dropped the strain and tried to breathe softly.</p><p>His spine was okay though, at least, he thought. Jon could move, even if he chose not to exacerbate the pain. He lay very still, and he could feel the wound dressings patching up the individual… stab wounds.</p><p>He didn’t understand how he had them. He only knew who was responsible.</p><p>So why weren’t they here?</p><p>The familiar dread sparked up and got to work, and his eyes snapped open.</p><p>‘Hello?’ He tried. His voice was hoarse and shallow. There was almost nothing to it.</p><p>He creaked his aching neck to look around the room, as if he’d simply missed all the loved ones who were <em>meant </em>to be crowding around him and asking if he was okay, even if he wasn’t, especially if he was hurt and frightened and alone.</p><p>The chair next to his bed was crushingly empty.</p><p>There wasn’t a book at rest there, pyramiding on the seat. There wasn’t a bag leaned up against the legs, or a coat draped over the back. There were no signs of life but his own, measured by the constantly bleeping machines and his own breath.</p><p>Where were the nurses? Shouldn’t someone know he was awake? Someone should know he was alive.</p><p>‘Hello?’ He tried again, with more force, something to prove. He was calling for help, and nobody came.</p><p>His bed faced a door. It was closed and it’s grey metal cast an imposing shape on the blank white wall. There was a single square window set in the door, and its blinds were drawn against the bluish LED light from the corridor. He took deeper breaths. He had to calm down. </p><p>To Jon’s left, there was a larger window. He turned over to examine it, and winced. The flimsy pale blue curtains let in the daylight. It hurt to look at. It hurt to turn away. He was stuck. He looked at the door, desperate for medical staff to burst through, offering him all the things he needed to calm down, like pain relief and explanations.</p><p>The ECG picked up on his racing heart, reminding him that he was panicking, making it obvious to himself and, apparently, no one else.</p><p>Restraint snapped. He hurt all over, there was an alarming gap in his memory that only got darker the more he tried to pry into the secret he kept from himself, and he was alone. No one was coming to see him. No one was here to help, even though he was in <em>hospital,</em> and that meant whatever had happened, it was bad, and no matter who he was, he needed help. He screamed.</p><p>And it didn’t do a damn thing except fulfil a promise to himself he’d already forgotten he made. It didn’t make him feel better, and still, no one came to his side.</p><p>The sound died pathetically in his throat when he stopped to breathe. His breaths were loud and shuddering, and they melted easily into sobs. The tears came hard and fast and they were caught on one side by the gauze under his eye. They fell freely down the other side of his face because it hurt to touch his face and wipe them away.</p><p>He felt worse than a child, scared in the night, because when he was a child he had not <em>allowed</em> anyone to help him. He promised them all that he was fine and when nightmares woke him up, he stayed up through the night to see the dawn rise. He got used to it, and no one knew, so no one could help. But this was <em>hospital, </em>and they were meant to help him here. There was something physically wrong with him, something that could be fixed, and he could be helped, at least with this. He was allowing someone, anyone to help, and there was no one. It wasn’t fair.</p><p>Weakened and dazed, he lay on his side, and cried into the pillow to stifle the noise. He wanted attention, medical attention, and he was trying to call out for it, but old habits die hard and old habits rule Jonathon Sims.</p><p>He watched the little square window in the door. He was holding out for just a flicker of movement, just someone walking past would do. Jon knew if he saw someone, anyone, he could call out to them. He hardly dared to blink, in case he missed them.</p><p>He knew there was someone there, behind the door.</p><p>There was a whole ward, a whole hospital, and Jon knew he couldn't be as alone as he seemed.</p><p>But the minutes ticked by and his heart beat out the seconds, and Jon had to start reasoning away this yawning pit of terror that opened upon waking up alone. Sure, he woke up alone every day, everyday bar the one upsettingly significant Sunday morning when he’d woken up in the arms of another, but every other day, sure, he woke up alone. This shouldn’t frighten him, then.</p><p>But this was exceptional. Hospitals were the exception.</p><p>Even his grandmother had someone to wake up to in hospital, even if she had woken up alone every other morning from the day Jon left until her last day. Jon was sure that exception counted, and now he knew. If he’d left her alone on that day, then she may have felt this, and that would be unforgivable.</p><p>So why was there no one to repay the favour? There wasn’t a single thing Jon could think he’d done to deserve this. Nobody did.</p><p>Eventually, a nurse or doctor would speak to him. They would explain what happened, and what he would have to do next. He’d be discharged. He’d get a taxi home and then he would sleep. He might not even take time off work. He had the whole weekend to recover and where else did he have to be? Who else did he have? Why not go back to work and see the faces he knew?</p><p>Where were they now?</p><p>Every thought circled back to that empty chair next to the bed, and started off another round of agonizing crying he could not afford to give into. He already knew, deep down, that this was fine. That this was the life he had chosen for himself. It was easier to reject the company of others before they rejected him, easier right up until he was hurt and alone.</p><p><em>And that was selfish</em>, he reprimanded himself. He chose this. He owned this. He made this bed so he would lie in it, crying.</p><p>He held himself real tight, and shivered. It was cold, and pulling the thin sheet around him did nothing.</p><p>And he watched the window. He watched the door. He waited, and he shuddered and shivered and screamed and stifled himself in turn, and he waited with clenched fists and shallow breaths that spilled over into crying and died down again.</p><p>He didn’t know how many times he cycled through despair to reason to hysteria and back before he saw it. Though he was looking directly at the small square window, he did not see its approach until it's silhouette was close enough to be seen through the slats in the blinds. Where the window had been empty, there was a dark shadow. It didn’t move.</p><p>Neither did Jon.</p><p>This was what he’d been waiting for, and Jon opened his mouth to call out for help like he planned. But he hesitated. His mouth dried and his throat tightened. The figure was waiting.</p><p>Medical staff wouldn’t wait.</p><p>Jon was not convinced it was human. It was about the right shape, but doubt crept in. The blinds were closed. He could only see its outline, and for some reason, that was not enough to go on for Jon. He couldn’t look away. Though the doubt was absurd, he could not dismiss it. His vision tunnelled on the door.</p><p>He knew the figure was human. Jon was not irrational. He just wasn’t sure whether this was someone who was meant to be waiting at the door for him. He wasn’t sure this was someone who should be here at all. He had wanted someone, anyone, but perhaps he was wrong.</p><p>Jon sat up straight. It hurt, but he craned his neck just trying to see, and make up his mind.</p><p>There was a knock on the door.</p><p>Jon breathed in sharply.</p><p>Whoever it was, it wasn’t staff.</p><p>His chest was heaving and his brow was furrowed.</p><p>Jon gripped the sheets in sharp-knuckled fists. He scrambled back until his back hit the bed frame and white hot panic finally overcame all his body’s protests. He eyed the big window, the one he was almost sure would take him to outside, away, because whatever it was behind that door, it was not who he’d been near delirious for want of seeing. It was not help, or support, or a friendly face. Jon knew what was behind that door, knew that it was always waiting, that it had nearly had him in the Institute and now it had finally—</p><p>‘Jon?’</p><p>The world returned underneath Jon.</p><p>'Jon? Are you in there?'</p><p>He slowly let the sheets fall from his hands, and smoothed them over. He was lightheaded with relief. He knew that voice.</p><p>‘Oh thank god.’ He breathed. ‘Elias? Is that you?’</p><p>‘Oh, good! They told me which room you’d be in at front desk, but I wasn't sure I had the right one-’</p><p>‘Um, that’s a bit-‘</p><p>‘Oh. Of course. I’m sorry, I should have known how it would come across. I just wanted to know if you were okay.’</p><p>‘I’m… I’m…’ Jon blinked away the lingering tears. They weren’t helping.</p><p>‘Jon?’ Elias’ voice pitched a little. ‘Can I come in?’</p><p>Jon’s head swam. Elias was Jon's boss, it was probably not quite right he was visiting him in hospital, and their short fling and subsequent avoidance had left things terse between them. At least on Jon's side. He had no idea how Elias felt. </p><p>Elias was here. That was how he felt.</p><p>‘Yeah.’ Jon acquiesced, and Elias turned the handle. He opened the door slowly, as if to give Jon the chance to change his mind, deny him an audience or just slam the door in his face if he had the strength to get up and push him away.</p><p>When Elias walked in, he had to admit, he hadn’t expected anything else, but he was still so deeply impressed. Jon’s voice had wavered with terror masquerading as suspicion, and his eyes were guarded and wary. His arms trembled. They were covered in thick, fluffy gauze patches. They wouldn’t heal well. Jon shouldn’t rest his weight on them, but he looked as though he were about to try his luck with getting out of bed.</p><p>‘Oh, Jon.’ He breathed. He spoke quietly, expertly aware of how alert to the sound of a voice Jon would be.</p><p>Elias was there, standing at his bedside and carrying a bouquet. The sight of it knocked the breath out of him.</p><p>Jon had to put a hand to his mouth. He swallowed thickly, and shut his eyes for a moment.</p><p>Elias. He was here, and there was someone, at last. The bouquet was beautiful, and there was no question of who it was for. It was for Jon. There was no one else here, no one except Elias. He was here for Jon. There was no one else he could be there for.</p><p>These thoughts ricochet through Jon’s heart, obliterating any rebuttal his mind may try, and  Elias turned away and busied himself with putting the bouquet of flowers in the empty vase on the windowsill. The window was locked against the afternoon heat and every other threat from the outside world. The curtains hung loose, and Elias tied them back, revealing the pleasant day. The sky was blue, the clouds looked soft, and the world looked gentle to Jon. It was daytime. Jon blinked and Elias was still there, the image of someone there, for him, bearing flowers, was not just some desperate mirage.</p><p>‘Its… it’s really good to see you. I was worried.’ Jon added quickly, as if that helped.</p><p>‘You? Were worried about me? Why? May I sit down?’ Elias asked, so polite. It obviously mattered to him that he respected Jon’s boundaries. He nodded, and Elias sat on the edge of the bed with him. He looked questioningly at Jon, who nodded enthusiastically. He didn’t want him to go. He said nothing. He wanted Elias to stay, possibly more than Jon wanted anything in the world. He couldn’t be alone like that again, at least, not right now. He’d be fine once he was discharged, he told himself, he would be strong enough to go home to his empty flat and remain there in solitude until the weekend wore out and he could go back to the Institute.</p><p>Just as long as he had this first, now that this was possible.</p><p>‘Why wouldn’t I be worried about you? You weren’t here. No one was. I thought I was the onl-‘ He couldn’t think. It was unthinkable. To be the only survivor of something horrific, just on the edge of his memory.</p><p>‘We all evacuated safely, it was <em>you</em> we were all worried about. You had us all very worried indeed.’ He almost sounded cross. But so affectionate. Jon didn’t get it.</p><p>‘No… that’s not true.’ He began. But memory was a puzzle with one piece missing, and Elias seemed to have it. He shook his head.</p><p>‘We all evacuated with the alarm, but you were missing. It was stupid, but in the end, they couldn’t stop me from going back for you. I probably should have waited for the all clear but… well, I made it.’ He offered a lopsided, sheepish smile. Apologetic.</p><p>Jon narrowed his eyes.</p><p>‘And where was I?’</p><p>It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Elias, and what he was saying seemed to make sense. At least, Jon could follow the words, but they just didn’t fit into his world view.</p><p>‘Under your desk. No one noticed you there. You’d had one of your seizures, again. But that won’t be a problem for you anymore. The doctor’s found the underlying cause and it’s all sorted now!’ He said it brightly, as if he didn’t want Jon to worry, but the words were deeply troubling.</p><p>Jon waited for him to elaborate. Instead, Elias leaned against the wiry headboard, and Jon resisted the near overwhelming urge to embrace him. This wasn’t that, he reminded himself. And he had more questions, and this was no sort of continuation of the sleepy Sunday morning Jon had been too hungover to appreciate properly. The gap remained between them, as daunting and unnavigable to Jon as the Artic Circle. As cold and as quiet, too; it seemed that Elias wasn’t going to explain unless Jon pressed him. So he did.</p><p>‘Underlying cause?’ He prompted, drawing on all his sharpness to protect his voice from shaking.</p><p>He looked at Elias’ face as he spoke. His eyes were soft and sorry, his mouth curled into a brave smile.</p><p>‘The Institute became infested with a rare parasite, it was actually undocumented until now. The working hypothesis is that you were infected during the initial infestation a few months ago. And left untreated, you contracted a form of toxoplasmosis, hence the seizures. It might be a coincidence that the larval bloom coincided with a seizure, or ongoing stress may have triggered one, or it might have been the alarm itself, but- oh no, Jon, don’t worry-’</p><p>He spoke earnestly, but like he was trying to hold back emotion. Carefully—as in, full of care. Jon’s stomach churned, and Elias easily pulled him into a hug, a quick squeeze to ground him when it felt as though the world was dropping out from beneath him. His bed fell away from under him, and Elias held him tight around the shoulders as Jon went limp in his arms. There was nothing more Jon could have asked for on this earth. Elias didn’t release him, though he loosened his grip so he could face Jon when he carried on speaking.</p><p>‘There’s good news! They’ve treated it. They removed all the worms! It’s all okay now.’ Elias squeezed him close against him again, and Jon couldn’t look at Elias, he looked past his gorgeous profile and to the bouquet in a vase on the window. For him. He resisted the urge to sink into the warmth he felt and cry there, where it was safe. He pulled away a little, still encircled by Elias’ arms, and Jon asked a harder question instead of welcoming the embrace.</p><p>‘Why’d they tell you all of this? Shouldn’t I be the first to know?’</p><p>‘They haven’t seen you yet? That’s disgraceful. Do you want me to go get you someone?’</p><p>Jon shook his head, and held on. They lapsed into silence as Jon processed what Elias told him, and struggled to keep his head above the rising panic. Elias’ arm was loosely slung over Jon’s shoulders, and the distance between them had sprung up once more. Jon resented the strip of white sheet he could see between his hospital gown and Elias’ navy blue jeans. He'd never seen him in them before. It was the weekend, Jon supposed, and Elias had elected to be here.</p><p>‘Oh, and there’s more!’</p><p>‘Good news?’ Jon looked up.</p><p>‘Yeah. They’re naming it after you. Isn’t that exciting?’</p><p>It was so stupid, but Jon laughed. It was almost normal, the sort of thing friends could joke about.</p><p>‘Huh. I’m going down in history after all.’ Jon murmured. This was just like friendship. Jon had forgotten what it was like to make friends. He could almost make himself believe that the way his heart constricted and left his chest tight and painful was normal for making friends. Tentatively, Jon rested his head on Elias’ shoulder, felt his side press into Elias’ chest, and wondered whether the contact would be acceptable, whether his breach was okay when he did it. Elias’ hands flattened on the small of Jon's back, and he startled.</p><p>It was the softer touches that broke a person like Jon. A shared joke, a quiet smile, and Elias laughed quietly, as if he were trying not to shake too much and hurt Jon’s aching body he allowed to rest on his own. Jon closed his eyes and finally surrendered to the contact with an exhausted sigh. He was pressed flush against Elias, and Jon began to relax for the first time since he woke up.</p><p>Elias brushed a lock of hair out of Jon’s unbandaged eye, and felt him tense up. The gesture filled Jon with… nausea. Something half remembered that he’d hated. No, it was butterflies and nerves. He was so confused. He opened his eyes and his vision was filled with Elias.</p><p>‘You said you came back for me. Why?’</p><p>Jon had to know. So much of his skin itched, and now he almost wanted to brush Elias off him because the sensation was intense, and because his dressings hurt, and because Jon was overwhelmed and because the feeling was as sickeningly familiar as the words to a song. He didn’t know whether he needed it or feared it more.</p><p>‘I’m sorry. We shouldn’t talk about this right now. This isn’t about me, or my feelings for you. I just… let’s just say it’s very important to me that you’re safe.’</p><p>The smile he offered was a weak and tired thing, much like Jon. He turned the words this way and that, tried to understand what else they could mean if not what Jon thought they did. His skin prickled and he didn’t know whether to try and run away from it, or to close the distance Elias created when he shifted his weight away. Jon made up his mind.</p><p>‘We could talk now. I don’t mind.’ Jon was desperate to talk now. Maybe he never wanted to stop talking. Maybe they could chase off the silence together forever.</p><p>Elias shook his head. ‘No, it’s not fair. You’re not well, and it can wait.’</p><p>He rested against Elias, and pushed his luck as far as he dared.</p><p>‘Then why are you here?’</p><p>He almost whispered it. He didn’t want Elias to think this was some kind of instruction. He wanted him here, badly, and it felt bad. It felt bad to want so deeply, it felt vulnerable and lonely and hot under his thin hospital gown. He felt bad, but he didn’t want Elias to go. He held on to Elias’ forearm tightly, digging each fingernail into the skin as if that might make the difference.</p><p>Elias turned and looked at him, and laced their fingers together. Jon relaxed infinitesimally. Elias sighed, perhaps contently? No, Jon thought, face dropping, Elias sighed sadly.</p><p>‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, but when I phoned your emergency contact, I figured this might be the situation.’</p><p>Jon flinched.</p><p>That wasn’t what he was expecting.</p><p>It certainly wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Perhaps he didn’t want Elias to know and understand him at all.</p><p>‘No.’</p><p>Elias raised an eyebrow.</p><p>Jon tried to explain himself. ‘You’ve misunderstood-‘</p><p>Elias interrupted him.</p><p>‘I don’t think I have. If you had someone in your life that would come to your side, then you wouldn’t put a dead woman down as the only person to call if you were hurt. I am, by the way, so sorry for your loss.’</p><p>His voice was laden with sympathy, and Jon rejected it utterly. No one was meant to know how empty his life had become. Emergency contacts were never meant to be called, and Jon was never meant to be in trouble.</p><p>The moment of silence was heavy and crushed all the power Jon could muster.</p><p>‘I don’t need pity.’ He spat, trying to regain himself. He sat up, and shifted away. He could decide never to see Elias again.</p><p>But Elias gently placed a hand on Jon’s cheek, carefully avoiding brushing his fingers against the gauze covering his eye. Jon closed his eyes and leaned into the contact like he needed it, the weight of Elias’ words falling away compared to the importance of his presence in this desolate place, the little finger curling under his jawbone and the thumb sweeping his uninjured cheekbone. Elias used his leverage to turn Jon’s face back towards him, so Jon gave in and looked.</p><p>‘I’m sorry. It’s just that… you don’t deserve to be alone. I told you, didn’t I? It matters to me that you’re safe. Safe and happy and everything else. I went back for you, but that’s not pity. That’s…’</p><p>Jon couldn’t meet his eyes. He looked just behind Elias, at the flowers on the windowsill, and he thought it all over.</p><p>If he was selfless, he’d tell Elias to leave before he got hurt because Jon was difficult. But because Jon was difficult, he leaned in once more, though he gave Elias time enough to run, if he wanted to. Jon didn’t need pity, or sympathy, and he didn’t need anyone to kiss him better.</p><p>But he wanted all that, and more. And that was enough. It was too much to ask of someone, but Jon was selfish enough to ask. He was so repulsed he wanted to run away from himself, and Elias slid the cradling grip on his face behind his neck, pulling them closer together. As he pushed the falling hair behind Jon’s ear, Elias pressed his lips to Jon’s, and there was nothing but the comfort of a lover, a kind of tenderness Jon had never dared to dream of feeling for himself. Elias kissed him carefully, as if he knew just how the marks under the bandages hurt.</p><p>It was sweeter than the first time they kissed, gentler and they both cried, with relief and that which could not be said, but still could be expressed. And yet, Jon burned the same way he did when he was caught out and exposed. He felt like a liar when he caught Elias’ name on his hitched breath. If he was lying, he lied compulsively, going back for kiss after kiss, and Elias obliged him again and again.</p><p>When he left, apologetically, promising he’d be back as soon as he could, perhaps even later, Jon’s room erupted with medical staff. Jon jumped, and once they were there it was as though the room had never been empty or quiet before. As if the place had always been alive with the ruckus of staff and patients and instruction, workplace chatter filtered through the air over arguing families, crying babies, and authoritative paramedics barking orders at each other over unconscious bodies.</p><p>Before he could dwell on their maintained absence, and sudden, overwhelming presence, a nurse showed him how to use the patient-controlled analgesia device, a small remote control that delivered Jon’s dose of morphine on demand. He could click the button as many times as he liked, and he would still receive a controlled dose while maintaining his precarious sense of autonomy.</p><p>He clicked the little button like a pen lid, and sunk into the airless, dense joy of pain relief. It was the closest thing he would get to lying close to someone he may even love.</p><p>Foolish thought, he knew, but Elias had gone back for him. Elias had saved him when he was trapped and unconscious, just because it was him. If that was not love, then Jon did not know what love was. If that wasn’t love, then Jon might prefer it to love.</p><p>He slept peacefully. The next day, they would change his gauze and Jon would see what had happened to him, the price he had to pay for a body that was composite and his alone. Jon would cry over the sight, and Elias would see him, and it would not change how he felt. Elias would hold onto him like he was someone special, important, someone who deserved nothing but the love or whatever it was that Elias was offering him.</p><p>When Elias would tentatively ask if Jon wanted to go back to his when they discharged him, Jon wouldn’t question it. He would say yes. To Elias, Jon would say yes a thousand times.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Le Lay de Plour</p><p>Whoever loves well forgets slowly,<br/>And the heart that slowly forgets<br/>Is like the fire that burns<br/>But cannot easily be put out.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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